Category Archives: Death

Aug 09 2020
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Beliefs, Compassion, Death, God

The Crying God

A recent conversation. We had a patient on our hospice service who was a beautiful loving elderly man of deep faith. His wife had died the week before, and he was in tormenting pain due to tumors pressing on the nerves around his spine. Bed bound, tortured, and longing for death. One of my chaplain colleagues lamented, “Why won’t God just take him?”

My response: “Is that what you think? That God kills people? Because if we say God comes to take him, then God must also come and take the children from the pediatric cancer wards and the infants from their mother’s arms in the NICU.”

My chaplain friend hedged her bet and suggested, “Well, what I mean is that God calls us home.”

“Then don’t answer the phone!” was my irreverent reply.

I know what she was trying to convey. I’ve read all of the same theological arguments. “We use words like omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and sovereignty like we know what they mean” ( Christian Wiman).

“So what do you think?” she curtly shot back.

“I think when we die, God cries. I think God cries over the missed opportunities we had to give and receive love because we were too afraid—afraid we were not worthy of love. I think God cries over the cruelty we unleash on each other out of the fear of not having enough. I think God cries over our not knowing how God aches for communion with us.”

My friend turned away exasperated by me and my questions. I think that’s a result of my spending too much time with Death—he’s taught me to be wary of any god who stands by unmoved when we need Her most.

Dallas Willard says, “The acid test for any theology is this: is the God presented one that can be loved heart, soul, mind and strength?”

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Jul 25 2020
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Acceptance, Death, Forgiveness, Grace

Looking for a Place to Fit

Looking for a Place to Fit

Sitting next to Jake’s bed as he lay dying, watching his fitful sleep, I noticed the framed sign on the wall near his bed in the adult foster home. It read: “When I was a kid, I prayed every night for a bicycle, but then I found out this isn’t the way God works. So then I stole one and asked Him for forgiveness.”

A hard life of drugs, alcohol, and rock-n-roll had taken its toll on Jake’s forty-something-year-old body. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, living fast and dying young doesn’t always leave a good-looking corpse. Nearly all of Jake’s teeth had rotted out, save the bicuspid on his upper right side. His abdomen was greatly distended (bloated) from terminal liver disease. And Jake was painfully afraid of death.

Jake had some sort of a Baptist background and had loved to play the drums. Years before, as a result of his addictions, Jake had deserted his wife and daughter. When I first met him, he told me that all he wanted was to see them again, to be given a last chance to “make things right.” Mercifully, his ex-wife and daughter did come to see him, brining along a newborn grandson whom Jake had never seen. It was a beautiful reunion with a lot of love and grace. Before they left, Jake’s family made a collage of family pictures and mounted it on the wall next to the framed sign. Jake was so proud of his family. He would lie for hours on his side, simply looking at the collage and delighting in the pictures of his grandson.

But now, weeks later, he was dying, and I was sitting there praying for him. Several times he woke up in pain. His care giver, Joe, and I repositioned him to ease his way. I moistened his lips and mouth with one of those pink sponge swabs soaked in water.
Looking at the pictures of his daughter and grandson, I thought of how much Jake had missed out on as he wandered the world looking for his place to fit. What if everything his thirsty soul had longed for was right there at home the whole time?

Earlier that morning, I’d read some lines from Antony the Great, the first of the desert fathers. “What must one do in order to please God? Pay attention to what I tell you. Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes. Whatever you do, do according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures. Wherever you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts, and you will be saved.”
We’re all looking for a place to fit. We’re all looking for a meta-narrative, a grand story that helps explain our lives, makes sense of our existence, and provides a source of meaning to our days. Often, we don’t need to travel to discover that story. I think that’s why St. Antony tells us that, if we find that place, we should not easily leave it.

I was still lost in these thoughts, when Joe the care giver’s two young daughters arrived home from school and went running down the hallway outside of Jake’s door fighting about something. I said a short benediction for Jake and bade him Godspeed.

As I pulled out of the driveway, I noticed in the rearview mirror two young Mormon missionaries cresting the hill behind me. Their starched white shirts and black ties were a sharp contrast to the gray overcast November sky behind them. Two more pilgrims searching for a place to fit, I thought. Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all …

 

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Jul 15 2020
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Beliefs, Death, Freedom, Meaning, Peace, Riches, Uncategorized, Wisdom

A Requiem for Rudy

Rudy was a devout atheist who regularly attended the First Presbyterian Church. Actually, that’s where we met, sort of. It’s not that Rudy was looking to convert from atheism—he just loved to sing, and being in the Presbyterian choir gave him a chance to share the beauty of his deep bass voice.

The pastor was out of town one Sunday and had asked me to preach for her. The next day Rudy knocked on my office door at the hospital. After a brief introduction I thought he had come because he had been captivated by the brilliance of my sermon. I soon discovered he was on a mission and this interview was a test.

During the sermon I had mentioned I was a hospice chaplain. Rudy had come to check out my views on advance directives and set me straight if I didn’t see things as he did. His wife had died after years of dementia and the toll it had taken on him and his children (both emotionally and financially) caring for her body long after her mind, memories, and anima had vacated was devastating. After retiring from a distinguished career of psychiatry, Rudy now spent his days working to help people plan for their death. He had experienced firsthand the importance of making your preferences known about the kind of medical care you would and would not want to have done if you could no longer communicate for yourself. I passed Rudy’s test.

He became a dear friend and mentor. Rudy was one of those rare individuals who seemed to have shed his ego and passionately enjoyed his living. Well into his nineties, he continued to learn, to read, to sing, to travel, and to enjoy his beloved partner. Rudy was simply alive while always having his dying in view.

The week before he died he called me to his home and asked if I would give the eulogy at his memorial service. After pointing out the incongruity of praising an atheist in a Presbyterian church—I humbly agreed. He chuckled and handed me a file folder containing what he wanted me to say. The folder contained the distilled data of his richly lived life: his resume, his accolades, and his distinguished achievements. All facts. But what was missing from the folder was the delight he exuded when learning new discoveries about how the brain works, the passion in his eyes as he shared his thoughts about living and dying, the joy on his face while singing in a choir. What was missing from the folder was the way he made you feel special when you were with him.

Early on in our relationship Rudy sent me a letter in which he quoted Johannes Brahms from one of the pieces he loved to sing, “The German Requiem.” Words Rudy’s life made very real –

“Lord, make me to know the measure of my days on earth,
to consider my frailty that I must perish.”

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