Chaplain's Corner

October is a month when death shows up all around us.  Our gardens have all died off and most of us have pulled up the dead plants that we spent so much time during the summer months nurturing.  The leaves have left the trees, revealing the raw nakedness of each tree, a nakedness that will endure another long Manitoba winter; buffeted by wind, and snow and cold.  And it won’t be long, that we will look at those same trees with a longing, a longing to see life reemerge after winter tires us with its cold, white sterility.

Death: we accepted it as it shows up each year in the normal cycle of life.  We even enjoy the early stages of this death, which we have come to call harvest, for it is when the plants die that so many then give up the abundance of their summer growing season, an abundance that feeds us and provides income for our families  We enjoy the fall colors that adorn the trees but these colored leaves are in botanical reality the signs of dying and the precursors of trees shedding their life to reenter that long period of near death that we call winter.

This same dying happens all around us in the animal world.  You hearty souls that still raise chickens and do your fall butchering, not only witness, but participate in the deaths of your birds so that your freezer can be filled for the needs of the coming winter.  Most of us don’t come within a thousands yards of the deaths of the animals that we eat, the cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys, the fish and seafood that we enjoy so much.  But before we can enjoy that prime rib at our favorite restaurant, or that bucket of chicken from our favorite chicken place, death occurs.

Our hospitals and nursing homes are places where death is also common place.  Those of us, who work in these facilities, grow somewhat comfortable with the reality.  Some of us get numb, never allowing ourselves to get attached to those we care for so that when they die, it becomes just a matter of fact.  Others become comfortable with death, similar to the way you may be comfortable with the death that comes to the vegetation all around us each fall or the way we have become comfortable with the deaths of countless animals that we use as food to nourish our bodies.  It is a necessary part of life, it is unavoidable and therefore, we must take it in stride.

In all honesty, death remains a rather potent force in my life.  By potent force I mean that although death is a common aspect of my work, I remain open to and aware of the struggle that dying brings and the aftermath it leave when it is done.  Some of the most valiant struggles I have ever witnessed have been those who struggle against the power of death as it slowly and insidiously creeps over them.  People respond very differently to death.  For some, say for instance a 100+ person, weary of this world; death is longed after like the visit of a child who has lived away from home for many years.

For others, say for instance the 50 year old mother of four, death is fought off like a mother bear protecting its cubs.  There is no acceptance, no surrender, nothing but an all out, no holds barred, battle.  Most of the time death wins but there are times when the will to live seems so powerful that a person miraculously wrestles free from the jaws of death and lives to tell the tale.  Then there are others who succumb nearly every day, not because the want to, but because the throws of death have so thoroughly exhausted them that they finally cry “Uncle.” and yield to the inevitable.

So here we are again in the season of death, the season when all that we worked so hard for in the summer months, simply dies, dying up and withering only to be discarded like worthless trash or tilled back into the soil to nourish the life that we will rejoice over this coming spring.  In this season of death, maybe it would be useful for us to stop and consider the reality that one day, we too will die.  That no matter how healthy we are, no matter how well we take care of ourselves, no matter what precautions we exercised to hold off infection and sickness and disease, we will die.

Back in 2005 in Forbes an article appeared with the title “10 Ways to Live Longer.  The article suggested that we (1) Don’t oversleep, (2) Be optimistic, (3) Have more sex, (4) Get a pet, (5) Get a VAP (an advanced cholesterol test), (6) Be rich, (7) Stop smoking, (8) Chill out, (9) Eat your antioxidants, (10) Marry well.  But, we all know people that have done all these things and they still die what seems to be prematurely.  In a society that seems obsessed with outsmarting death, with living longer, with ignoring the unavoidable, maybe we need to take more time contemplating death and spend less time trying to push the reality as far from our conscious minds as possible.
 
Might I be so bold as to offer my own “4 Ways to Prepare for Death” as opposed to “10 Ways to Live Longer.

(1) Make your peace with God.  It is interesting that this phrase is commonly used and accurately so.  The Bible teaches that we are born in sin and as such that we are enemies of God in need of making our peace with God.  Of course the Bible teaches us that this peace is achieved when we can own our sinfulness and believe that Jesus died for our sins so that we could be reconciled with God. 

(2)  Make your peace with other people.  Along life’s path we all tend to hurt others.  Sometimes the hurts we cause are unintentional and other times we wanted to hurt the other person.   We all know what it feels like to live having hurt others.  We know the brokenness that these hurts bring to our relationships, we know the distance these hurts create, and we know the bitterness that grows deep roots down into our soul if we allow those hurts to fester over many years.  I would reco0mmend that we keep as clean a slate as possible, doing all we can, as soon as we can to mend the breaks that occur because of the offences that we commit, whether we intended to hurt the other or not.

(3) Life your life with purpose. Far too many just drift through life, aimless and without purpose, just putting in time.  What an unfulfilling way to live.  Find your purpose, your reason for living and then live out that purpose as fully as possible.  One of the common issues that dying people wrestle with is, “Did my life have meaning?”  Well, if we live purposefully, then our life will have meaning, we will have impacted our world positively and we will be able to come to our dying days contented that we lived well.  Don’t compare your purpose to anyone else’s, just find your own and pursue it!

(4)  Choose joy; don’t expect others to be your source of happiness.  In many ways joy is a choice, disconnected from the circumstances of life.  This is not true of happiness.  The word “happy” comes from the same root as the world “happen”.  Happiness is the emotional response to experiencing pleasant happenings.  Joy on the other hand is the choice to find satisfaction in all of life’s happenings.  To be joyful then means that I act as an agent, to be happy means that I live as a victim to the circumstances of my life, waiting for something pleasant to happen so that I might feel good.

Oh, I suppose books have been written on this subject, but really, if we are at peace with God, at peace with others, living with purpose, and choosing joy, what more could we want?  We know from years of experience that little else really matters.