Death and Dying

Gregg’s Reflection

While death is a topic most avoid, I have thought of it since I was a young man. “Daily keep your death before your eyes,” said Saint Benedict. As I move through the final third of life, that’s a good perspective.

“If you hold a healthy awareness of your own mortality, your eyes will be opened to the glory and grandeur of life.” Parker Palmer

My spiritual journey began searching for “the path with a heart” that Carlos Castenada learned from the Yaqui sorcerer he apprenticed with and described in his book, The Teachings of Don Juan. So it is appropriate at this stage in life to adopt some of his teachings:

“As the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan instructed Carlos Castenada: Ask death to be your ally, to remind you, especially at times of difficult choices, what is important in the face of your mortality. Imagine death as ever present, as accompanying you everywhere but remaining just out of sight behind your left shoulder.“ Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 281

Live everyday as if it were your last.

What crosses over with us?  Let me pose an idea. Nothing will come into God’s presence that is not of God. Then I suppose moving between here and there will burn away anything that is not of God. So, the more I allow myself to be shaped to be like Jesus, the more will come into the presence of God.   I remember a book, Five People you Meet in Heaven. The protagonist finds himself encountering his father, who is a little boy. My father made little of religion, and did little to allow himself to be shaped into the shape of Jesus. So, I can imagine encountering him as a child.

Or, as John of the Cross put it: Our Lord God is a consuming fire (Deut 4:24) and his power is infinite. He consumes infinitely, burning with great vehemence, and transforming into himself all he touches. He burns everything according to the measure of its preparation, some more, some less. It consumes not the spirit when it burns, but rather delights and deifies it, burning sweetly within according to the purity of their spirits. The divine fire came down at Pentecost, not consuming the soul, the burning does not distress it but gladdens it; it does not weary it, but delights it, and renders it glorious and sweet. St John of the Cross,  McGuinn, Essential Writings of Christian Meditation, p. 214-215

Journaling Prompts

How might your awareness of death lead to living each day to the fullest? How might you follow Chief Tecumseh’s advice to, “So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.” What would have to happen for you to approach your death with no regrets?

Scripture

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life.”

2 Kings 20:1-6

Naked I came from the womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Job 1:21

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and staff, they comfort me.

Psalm 23:1-4

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants.

Psalm 116:15

When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.

Psalm 146:4

And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?).

Mark 15:34

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?

John 11: 25-26

If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

Romans 14:8

When our life is immersed in the love and service of God, death becomes a transition moment rather than the dreaded end.

Renovare Bible Notes on Romans, p. 257 NT

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Philippians 1:21

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Philippians 3:20-21

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:3-4

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Revelations 21:4

Ancient Writings

These are Five Daily Reflections that the Buddha suggests people recite every day: 

Just like everyone, I am of the nature to age, I have not gone beyond aging.

Just like everyone, I am of the nature to sicken, I have not gone beyond sickness.

Just like everyone, I am subjected to the results of my own actions, I am not free from these karmic effects.

Just like everyone, I am of the nature to die, I have not gone beyond dying.

Just like everyone, all that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will change, will become otherwise, will become separated from me.

Buddha

Go forth now, you have a good escort. The one who created you has provided for you. The one who created you will guard you as a mother does to a little child.

Claire of Asissi’s final recorded words indicate she was joyfully watching her own departure and trustfully speaks directly to her soul in beautiful feminine images.

Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 15

Julian of Norwich suffered a near fatal illness at age 30. During the five days she lingered near death, God revealed himself to her through Divine showings. She retired to a cell and remained there contemplating what she had been shown for the rest of her life. Her book is the first book published by a woman in English.

Here are her thoughts on suffering after seeing Jesus dying on the cross in her visions: We are now on His cross with Him in our pains and our suffering, dying; and if we willingly remain on the same cross with His help and His grace until the last moment, suddenly He shall change his appearance to us, and we shall be with Him in heaven and then shall be brought to joy.

And here I saw truthfully that if He showed us His most blissful face now, there is no pain on earth nor in any other place that would distress us, but everything would be to us joy and bliss. And for this little pain that we suffer here shall have an exalted endless knowledge in God, which we could never have without that pain. The crueler our pains have been with Him on His cross, the more shall our honor be with Him in His Kingdom.

The Complete Julian of Norwich, Fr. John-Julian, p. 132-133

God spoke to Saint Mechtild, “Do not fear your own death, for when that moment comes, I will draw in my breath and you will come to me as a needle to a magnet.”

Mechthild of Magdeburg

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. 

Chief Tecumseh

Modern Writings

There is only one tragedy, in the end: not to have been a saint. 

Leon Bloy, Yes, and, p. 366

A man who keeps death before his eyes will at all times overcome his cowardice.

Thomas Merton, Wisdom of the Desert, p. 76

We are not here to live forever but to die well, releasing to the atmosphere courage, dignity and trust. Whenever we are able to move beyond the laws of the purely physical while still in form, we set aflame the names of God, releasing the energy and beauty of divine aliveness to the outer world.

Cynthia Bourgeault,” Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 56

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares. 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 6/23/20

If I die with much anger and bitterness, I will leave my family and friends behind in confusion, guilt, shame, or weakness. When I felt my death approaching, I suddenly realized how much I could influence the hearts of those whom I would leave behind.

If I could truly say that I was grateful for what I had lived, eager to forgive and be forgiven, full of hope that those who loved me would continue their lives of joy and peace, and confident that Jesus who calls me would guide all who somehow belonged to my life—if I could do that—I would, in the hour of my death, reveal more true spiritual freedom than I had been able to reveal during all the years of my life. I realize on a very deep level that dying is the most important act of living. It involves a choice to bind others with guilt or to set them free with gratitude.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 9/21/20

Our death may be the end of our success, our productivity, our fame, or our importance among people, but it is not the end of our fruitfulness. The opposite is true: the fruitfulness of our lives shows itself in its fullness only after we have died. We ourselves seldom see or experience our fruitfulness. Often we remain too preoccupied with our accomplishments and have no eye for the fruitfulness of what we live.

But the beauty of life is that it bears fruit long after life itself has come to an end. Jesus says: “In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest” (John 12:24). This is the mystery of Jesus’ death and of the deaths of all who lived in his Spirit. Their lives yield fruit far beyond the limits of their short and often very localized existence. 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 9/28/20

Suffering and death belong to the narrow road of Jesus. Jesus does not glorify them, or call them beautiful, good, or something to be desired. No, Jesus invites us to look at the reality of our existence and reveals this harsh reality as the way to new life.

The core message of Jesus is that real joy and peace can never be reached while bypassing suffering and death, but only by going right through them. Indeed, who escapes suffering and death? Yet there is still a choice. We can deny the reality of life, or we can face it. Jesus lived his life with the trust that God’s love is stronger than death and that death, therefore, does not have the last word. He invites us to face the painful reality of our existence with the same trust. 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 3/27/21

The real question for me as I consider my own death is not: how much can I still accomplish before I die, or will I be a burden to others? No, the real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others? In other words, how can my death be a gift for my loved ones so that they can reap the fruits of my life after I have died? 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 3/28/24

The life and death of a human being is exquisitely calibrated to automatically produce union with Spirit in the end. 

Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Dying, p. 15

The tragedy is not dying, the tragedy is living disconnected from life. 

Kathleen Dowling Singh, Grace In Dying, p, 272

8 Worldly concerns trapping us in reactivity: Loss & Gain, Pleasure & Pain, Fame & Shame, Praise & Blame.

Kathleen Singh, Grace in Aging, p. 116

The dying process is the culmination, or the peak, of the whole development of the spiritual journey, in which the total surrender to God involves the gift of life itself as we know it. ...The fullness of redemption is the capacity to be completely transformed in order to consent to the taking over of our entire being by the Divine Goodness. This is why it is necessary to get people into a practice that can move them beyond the limitations of their reason and their inclination to comment from this level of consciousness on what happens in them, around them and to them.

Centering Prayer, when it reaches full consent to our nothingness, and when the closeness of God becomes a permanent experience, is the perfect preparion for death, because it is death – one has already died to the false self in the Night of Sense and has died to the ego in the Night of Spirit – and so is there any self left at all? Even the true self has been transcended.

Thomas Keating
The Gift of Life: Death & Dying, Life & Living

The genius of Jesus’ teaching is that he reveals that God uses tragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself, not to wound or punish us, but to bring us to a Larger Identity: “Unless the single grain of wheat loses its shell, it remains just a single grain” (see John 12:24). 

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 4/15/20

We realized the moment of death itself is not an event but a cessation, a ceasing of the next life-sustaining inhalation. From the vantage point of our ego consciousness this is true. But when understood from the spiritual point of view that we will explore in these reflections, another more expansive, poetic way of understanding can emerge.

We begin to realize that when we are born and take in our first breath, God is exhaling himself, whole and complete in and as the gift and miracle of our very life. We move on in our passage through time, sustained by God, inhaling/exhaling, inhaling/exhaling through all our days. Then, when the moment of death finally arrives, we exhale and do not inhale. And in our final exhalation God inhales us back into the infinite depth of God, which is our true and eternal home. 

James Finley, The Healing Path, p. 9-10

As a person ripens in unsayable intimacy to God, they ripen in a paradoxical way. They understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God sustains us in all things. God watches over us; it does not mean God prevents the tragic thing from happening, it means God is intimately hidden as a profound, tender sweetness that flows and carries us along in the intimate depths of the tragic thing itself...up to and through death, and beyond. St. John of the Cross speaks of a windfall of delight. When fruit is ripe, the slightest wind can cause it to fall to the ground. The windfall first points to little promises along the way, but also to our last breath, which sends us falling forever into the depthless depths of God. 

James Finley, Richard Rohr, A Spring Within, p. 173-174

The values that are called the fruits of the Spirit by St. Paul—gentleness and peace and forbearance, compassion, love, joy—these are alchemical products that grow on the other side of the human being not afraid to die. We can find and collectively draw on those wonderful gifts. But it requires the personal willingness (as the old monks in the desert said), to “sit in your cell and ponder the hour of your death” until you’ve really worked through your system what this promise means: “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” [Romans 14:8]. . .

To the extent that we live our life from the heart now with utter integrity, death proves to be no interruption to identity. . . . Who we are is held in the love of God from before time; and as we lean into that now in life and taste it, we’ll be prepared to really see death as the fullness of being and not as the lessening of it. 

Cynthia Bourgeault, “The Gateway to Freedom,” Wisdom in Times of Crisis

You Will Lose Everything; Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away.

Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away. But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you.

This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar. 

Jeff Foster

It is the experience of pain that forms the inner well to contain joy. 

Phileena Heuertz, Mindful Silence p. 78

The sage continues to sustain the human community even after he has left the scene, even after he dies. His image flourishes in individual psyches and in collective memory. One's remaining image, that unique way of being and doing, left in the minds of others, continues to act on them – in anecdote, reminiscence, dream; as exemplar, mentoring voice, ancestor—a potent force working in those with lives left to live.

Depth Psychologist James Hillman, from Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin, p. 431

All that exists is a manifestation of being, forms arising and sinking back into the mystery of the absolute. 

Sandra Maitri, Spiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram, p. 91

Contemplating your Death: First and foremost, what I found for many people, myself included, is that facing the fact that I am not going to live forever really aligns my life with my values. Most people suffer what’s called the misalignment problem, which is that we don’t quite live according to our values.

A research study surveyed a group of women and compared how much satisfaction they derived from their daily activities. The women reported deriving more satisfaction from prayer, worship, and meditation than from watching television.

But the average respondent spent more than five times as long watching television than engaging in spiritual activities that they actually said they enjoyed more. There’s a way we want to spend our time, but we don’t do that because we don’t have the sense that time is short, time is precious. And the way to systematically raise the sense of urgency is to bring the scarcity of time front and center in one’s consciousness: I am going to die. If we have made peace with our own mortality, we can be fully present and support loved ones in their dying process, which can be a huge gift. 

Sigal Samuel: An interview with Nikki Mirghafori

Death is the means of our return to God. It is an encounter with Christ. It could be transformed into an act of worship, into an experience of healing. It is a friend, not an enemy. It is a beginning, not an end. 

Kallistos Ware, Orthodox priest and theologian (1934-2022)

The Five Greatest Regrets of the Dying 

Regret #1: I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Regret #2: I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

Regret #3: I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

Regret #4: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Regret #5: I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Shared originally on her blog, " Inspiration and Chai," Bronnie Ware spent years as a palliative care nurse, helping patients be as comfortable as possible in the time just before their deaths. She compiled their stories and the most repeated regrets she heard them utter in their final days. Do you ever imagine what the final years and months and days of your life will be like?

Terror Management Theory from Wikipedia. In social psychology, terror management theory (TMT) proposes a basic psychological conflict that results from having a desire to live but realizing that death is inevitable. This conflict produces terror, and is believed to be unique to human beings. Moreover, the solution to the conflict is also generally unique to humans: culture. According to TMT, cultures are symbolic systems that act to provide life with meaning and value. Cultural values therefore serve to manage the terror of death by providing life with meaning.

The simplest examples of cultural values that manage the terror of death are those that purport to offer literal immortality (e.g. belief in afterlife, religion). In many cases these values are thought to offer symbolic immortality by providing the sense that one is part of something greater that will ultimately outlive the individual. Because cultural values contribute to that which is meaningful, they also contribute to self-esteem. TMT describes self-esteem as being the personal, subjective measure of how well an individual is living up to their cultural values. Like cultural values, self-esteem acts to protect one against the terror of death. However, it functions to provide one's personal life with meaning, while cultural values provide meaning to life in general.

TMT is derived from anthropologist Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction The Denial of Death, in which Becker argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death. The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profound – albeit subconscious – anxiety in people that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it.

On large scales, societies build symbols: laws, religious meaning systems, cultures, and belief systems to explain the significance of life, define what makes certain characteristics, skills, and talents extraordinary, reward others whom they find exemplify certain attributes, and punish or kill others who do not adhere to their cultural worldview. On an individual level, self-esteem provides a buffer against death-related anxiety.

Evolutionary backdrop: Hunter-gatherers began using their emerging cognitive abilities to understand their world and facilitate solving practical problems to help meet basic needs for nutrition, mates, and other resources before their cognitive abilities had evolved to the point where explicit death awareness arose. But once this awareness materialized, the potential for terror that it created put pressure on emerging conceptions of reality so that any formation that was to be widely accepted by the masses needed to provide a means of managing this terror.

On the Day I Die, JOHN PAVLOVITZ

On the day I die a lot will happen. A lot will change. The world will be busy. On the day I die, all the important appointments I made will be left unattended. The many plans I had yet to complete will remain forever undone. The calendar that ruled so many of my days will now be irrelevant to me. All the material things I so chased and guarded and treasured will be left in the hands of others to care for or to discard.

The words of my critics which so burdened me will cease to sting or capture anymore. They will be unable to touch me. The arguments I believed I’d won here will not serve me or bring me any satisfaction or solace.  All my noisy incoming notifications and texts and calls will go unanswered. Their great urgency will be quieted. My many nagging regrets will all be resigned to the past, where they should have always been anyway. Every superficial worry about my body that I ever labored over; about my waistline or hairline or frown lines, will fade away.

My carefully crafted image, the one I worked so hard to shape for others here, will be left to them to complete anyway. The sterling reputation I once struggled so greatly to maintain will be of little concern for me anymore. All the small and large anxieties that stole sleep from me each night will be rendered powerless. The deep and towering mysteries about life and death that so consumed my mind will finally be clarified in a way that they could never be before while I lived.

These things will certainly all be true on the day that I die. Yet for as much as will happen on that day, one more thing that will happen.

On the day I die, the few people who really know and truly love me will grieve deeply. They will feel a void. They will feel cheated. They will not feel ready. They will feel as though a part of them has died as well. And on that day, more than anything in the world they will want more time with me. I know this from those I love and grieve over.

And so knowing this, while I am still alive I’ll try to remember that my time with them is finite and fleeting and so very precious—and I’ll do my best not to waste a second of it. I’ll try not to squander a priceless moment worrying about all the other things that will happen on the day I die, because many of those things are either not my concern or beyond my control.

Friends, those other things have an insidious way of keeping you from living even as you live; vying for your attention, competing for your affections. They rob you of the joy of this unrepeatable, uncontainable, ever-evaporating Now with those who love you and want only to share it with you. Don’t miss the chance to dance with them while you can. It’s easy to waste so much daylight in the days before you die. Don’t let your life be stolen every day, by all that you’ve been led to believe matters, because on the day you die—the fact is that much of it simply won’t.

Yes, you and I will die one day. But before that day comes: let us live

Success (I was inspired by this in 1995 GB)

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

Bessie Anderson Stanley. Success was the winning entry in a contest run by Brown Book Magazine in 1904. Bessie won a cash prize of $250, which paid off the mortgage on the house, among other things.