“Each of these sins – loss of faith, loss of hope, loss of patience, loss of humility (pride), and loss of serenity (avarice) – are pitfalls in our living, as well as our dying.”
There is a huge uncertain gap between theory and practice. My mom and I had many discussions about death after she was diagnosed but now that we are walking the actual walk much that seemed certain is no longer so.
Honestly, I do think that surviving this world with your soul intact is the most heroic thing we can do. When you embark on that journey, though, all the forces of darkness will try to crush you
I go back to John and consider the part about the people who keep God’s word will never see death. Margaret was fervent in prayer, constant in reading the Bible, faithful in attendance at Sunday school and church, and a practitioner of what she heard and understood from the Bible. And yet she died. It’s hard to reconcile Jesus’ words with the reality of life, especially a life as exemplary as hers.
This is about how all of us belongs to God–every muscle, sinew, and organ, as well as every thought and hope that flies out of our neurons–and God’s promise of a new, dazzling body that makes our mortal bodies of flesh pale in comparison, that we can scarcely comprehend.
We talk about the new film A GHOST STORY. It’s an exploration of grief, death, and the measure of a human life.
There have been some things which didn’t kill me, and also didn’t make me stronger. I wish people would stop saying stuff like that. Let’s face it, life can leave you weak and half-dead, trapped in death clothes that won’t come undone.
Donne’s poetry reminds us that as long as love exists, death cannot win.
I don’t think of wholeness as having an end or being a specific destination for which we are all striving, but rather wholeness is the journey of this life.
How have we not learned that the transformation of dead matter (failure, death, loss) into an agent of growth is the pattern we see everywhere—from the smallest plant to the evolving cosmos continually expanding and birthing new life from the detritus of death.