Book Review: The Lost Art of Dying

The details: L.S. Dugdale, The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom (New York: Harper One, 2020).

The problem and the question:  More and more North Americans have been dying poorly. We pursue a seemingly endless array of medical treatments with the hope of a cure, and, in exchange, often sacrifice our quality of life. We are dying alone and with regrets. And we die in fear, untethered from a sense of a bigger purpose. How can we support others’ dying and prepare for our own dying so that death is done “well”?

The thesis:  To die well, we must live well. 

What this means for Dugdale:  Dying well means living with a sense of our finitude.  We’re all going to die someday, and it’s best if we deal with that fact while we aren’t facing death head-on.  That does not mean we look forward to dying, but that we have judged and arranged our todays (and tomorrows) with an awareness that we cannot do/have it all.  We cannot be cured of death.

Dying well requires a connection to community and loved ones.  Which is to say that we must be present for others when they are dying (to both support them and to be reminded of our own mortality), and we must be prepared to unashamedly invite others in to our dying processes. Community helps us answer – or, at least admit that we often have – lingering questions about our existence.

Dying well means considering our literal deathbed.  The art of dying well is to curate, if you are able, your final days and moments so that you are at “home.” A hospital can be a “home” for various reasons, but Dugdale argues that hospitals often present barriers to dying well. So, thinking through what is important to you is a first step to dying in the bed and company of your heart’s desire.

Dying well requires that we acknowledge our fear of death.  It is out of fear of death that we “wage war” on the illnesses that ravage our bodies.  This fear is sometimes mistaken for a “desire to live,” though the quality of life one lives when on a third or fourth experimental drug says otherwise. It is natural to be afraid of what we do not know and what we cannot control, but Dugdale writes,“[N]ot all fear compels a person to submit to torturous procedures that are unlikely to help.”*.  To die well while afraid is to “walk courageously…toward the terror and sadness.”** To stare back at the fear of death is the only way to die well.

Dying well means attending to the body and the spirit. Dugdale writes of “vandalized shalom,” where bodies, communities, and the world are not as they are meant to be and are affected by decay.***  Yet it is within (broken) community that we find meaning and transformation. And it is within communities of faith, Dugdale suggests, that we find spiritual grounding to ease despair and emptiness.

Finally, dying well entails devoting time—more than one might think—to the rituals surrounding death.  While our culture around death has shifted significantly in the recent past, passing on to “professionals” the actions associated with saying our final good byes, Dugdale suggests that what is gained with efficiency does not offset what is lost ritually. Rituals, like preparing the body for burial or funerals, aren’t meant to be efficient, but to be effective markers of significant transition. In the case of death, they are meant to allow us to show love to the deceased, to the bereaved, and to contemplate our own mortality. What would it look like for families and communities to return to holding these rituals, rather than funeral homes?  Would it help the living to live (and die) better and to mourn more fully?

Personal reflection:  I finished this book on my birthday, a purposeful move…for though birthdays invite us to celebrate our lives and existence, with each passing year, they also mark, if we pay attention, our certain mortality. While I had a blip in my mid-20s where the idea of death filled me with utter sadness, I have largely felt unintimidated by death. I’m certainly not personally eager for it, nor do I wish anyone else an untimely death, but, with Dugdale, I have felt convicted that how we live (not what we have or ultimately what we accomplish) is how we die. And so I have tried to shape my life around priorities, which include faith, community, and no small amount of not-putting-up-with-crap.

A birthday donut: definitely contemplating my mortality, with the help of delicious, delicious carbs and fat.

Reading The Lost Art of Dying couldn’t have come at a better time–in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of societal upheaval, and in the midst of the earth rebelling against human abuse. Each of these circumstances reminds us of just how interconnected we all are. How your ability to live well relies on my ability to live well. How your ability to die well — without fear, surrounded by loved ones at home — is intricately connected with my ability to die well.

It may seem strange to educate ourselves on dying well, while death feels far off, but as Dugdale suggests, what better time is there?  What does it mean for you to live well? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

On a lighter but connected note: 

*Dugdale, 98.
**Dugdale, 110.
***Dugdale, 150.

God the Good Gardener – Proper 10A

Reimagining God as a creative and uninhibited farmer through the Parable of the Sower.

Background: A few years ago, I reflected on the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-9. This sermon, shared at Madison Mennonite on 7/12 and Germantown Mennonite on 7/19, “grows” out of those initial thoughts, expands them, and builds in the other Revised Common Lectionary texts of the day, Psalm 65 and Isaiah 55:10-13.

God the Good Gardener

Scripture is laden with metaphorical imagery for God and the way God acts in Creation.  Throughout both the Old and New testaments we encounter God in many forms – God is like a rock, a refuge.  God is like a warrior, a sovereign, a potter.  God is our metaphorical father and mother. God is like an eagle, a mother hen. God is a midwife, a bakerwoman. And so on…

As we hear in our scriptures today, God is like a gardener. Psalm 65, which we heard in the call to worship, declares that God “visits the earth and waters it.” In the Parable of the Sower, God scatters the Word on the ground that stretches out before God. And, in Isaiah 55, God waters the earth with God’s word, and the earth erupts with golden grain.

This image of God as a Gardener comes at a good point in our lives, here in the northern hemisphere, for seeds planted in earnest earlier in covid have taken root, and their abundance has begun to spill out and over trellises.  As one MMCer put it, we are approaching the season where gardeners must face the formidable “Deluge of the Green Bean.”

It is in this context, then, that we hear the parable of the sower, making connections as gardeners ourselves or as those who enjoy the plentiful harvests of others’ farms and gardens.

Land acknowledgment

I consider myself an average gardener. Much of my knowledge about gardening is the result of experience passed down through my family. Yet, it’s important to acknowledge that the gardeners and farmers of my family have accumulated that knowledge primarily as settlers on the land of peoples systematically displaced by European conquest and occupation. So, I offer this adapted land acknowledgment today as I share my reflections, a tension I and white folks must hold as we seek transformation and as we interpret biblical texts on the land.

Questioning Easy Interpretations

The parable of the sower is familiar enough to most of us that we know, without even reaching the interpretation of the parable, where the story is headed. The suggested lectionary reading includes the parable’s interpretation, but I left it out on purpose…

If there’s anything gardeners know and can agree to, it is this: one must resist predictable explanations and expectations when it comes to seeds. In honoring that, I resist the traditional, flannelgraph-worthy punch line of this parable: that some people are good because they’re prepared for the Gospel and some people are bad because they squander the Gospel.

As a gardener, I want to resist that dualistic interpretation. I want to resist it because when I reflect where I am in this parable, I see evidence that I’ve got all of these circumstances in me: sure, the fertile soil…but also the thin, rocky soil, the hungry birds, and no shortage of thorns or weeds.  I imagine this is true for most, if not all of us.  Each of these has a purpose for us as we grow in our understanding of who we are as followers of Jesus.

Thin, rocky soil

When the sower sows seed into thin, rocky soil, is it really all for nothing?  The seed sprouts, grows quickly, and then dies. 

But might what is gained in the long run balance the short-term loss?  In other words, while there will be no harvest of grain this year from that seed, all is not lost.  The plant that does grow will return to the earth, amending the soil as it composts. Over time, perhaps with the help of rain and animal droppings, too, seeds flung into this rocky soil will do the slow work of building up the land, until one day, there is a noteworthy harvest. 

The invitation of the thin, rocky soil is to recognize that the places within us where growth feels tenuous or unlikely, those places still hold profound potential.  God the Sower takes the long-view of who we are becoming.   And tosses seed where most other gardeners would leave the ground fallow. 

Weeds

Then there are the weeds. While the source of this quote might be surprising, a character in Jim Thompson’s 1952 thriller, The Killer Inside Me, states something gardeners love to re-quote (without knowing the source). The quote is: “A weed is a plant out of place.’ I find a hollyhock in my cornfield, and it’s a weed. I find it in my yard, and it’s a flower.”

It seems to me that so-called weeds have their own purpose and worth – whether retaining the soil’s moisture or reducing erosion or simply being a native part of an ecosystem we don’t totally understand. What if the invitation is to take the weeds – plants neither good nor bad, just in the wrong place – and move them to where they won’t choke out the fruit of the Spirit?

Birds

Then there are those hovering, hungry birds. I can only imagine that if I were in the crowd when Jesus was mentioning the birds that come and steal the seeds, it would have occurred to me about 10 minutes after Jesus had already pushed the boat off into deeper waters…to remember that there was another time when Jesus said something about the birds, and how they neither sow nor reap, and yet their heavenly Creator provides for them.

Well, how do I know it’s not the same birds from that example that are coming and taking the seeds in my field? Is there not enough grace and love in these good news seeds to share with all God’s creation? The invitation here is to see that God takes into account that all creation relies on God’s generosity. In turn, we are invited to resist our hoarding compulsions and to move instead into a spirit of jubilee – not just for humans, but for the land and creatures, too.

Fertile Soil

Which leaves us with the fertile soil.  One commentator on this text writes that the yield is “exceptional”; yet another says it’s “miraculous.”  These seem like distinctly different descriptions – one is possible, and the other is only possible with God’s intervention.  Both, I believe, are right.

Miraculously, God-the-sower imbues seeds with the most unexpected, unexplainable potential and possibility. That there is any of God’s word scattered in our lives is a gift. And exceptionally, we are created with the capacity to respond to God’s word — we do not rely on grace alone.  We can reflect on what sort of spiritual life we are cultivating.

The invitation of the fertile soil is to celebrate the average and exceptional fruits that we bear.  We are also invited to bask in the harvests borne of mystery and miracle.

The Sower Sticks Around

As much as the parable teaches us about us, it also teaches us about the nature of God…who, amongst other attributes, is like a good gardener.  A good gardener sows seeds in a field and then continues to tend the field.  God does not abandon God’s garden, but nurtures it through the seasons and years.  Listen to these words from Isaiah 55:10-13 (NRSV).

10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
12 For you shall go out in joy,
    and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall burst into song,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
    instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
    for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

God the Gardener does not sow seeds that sprout empty promises or empty threats. God the Gardener uses choice seeds, honest in their purpose, true to their description, and imbued with unimaginable potential.  God the Gardener can create growth in spaces where the most seasoned farmer wouldn’t want to waste good seed.

Where God is the Gardener, the land is filled with jubilation, and the trees give a standing ovation. Where God is the gardener, ancient sequoias overshadow the thorns and trees of life crowd out the briers. 

Where God is the gardener, the thin soil and the rich soil will be equally peppered with word-seeds of faith, hope, and love.  Where God is the gardener, the birds and the field mice and prairie dogs will find there is enough for them, too.  Where God is the gardener, plants once thoughtlessly type-cast as weeds will be transplanted into God’s front yard.

May we be gifted with ears to hear and eyes to see that as God sows God’s word, holiness and beauty are abundantly cultivated in us and all around us.  May we give thanks to God–the good gardener, the best farmer–for lovingly and faithfully tending the fields of our souls in each and every season.

Call to Worship: Psalm 86:11-17

We continue to worship online at Madison Mennonite Church. It’s been a solid four months of adapting, experimenting, messing things up, and stumbling into surprise successes. We aren’t returning to the physical building for worship anytime soon and I grapple regularly with how to think about how to curate nourishing worship experiences while we continue to meet online.

There are aspects of worship that are simply harder these days. Of course, we all know that robust, resonant communal singing is not possible. Then there are the needs of children and families whose children simply are not interested or willing to “participate” in virtual church. There’s the feeling that worship leaders have of speaking or singing into the void–where we used to be able to feel or observe or hear how people were encountering the Spirit in worship, now there is largely silence, a short in the feedback loop. Worship has become less of an embodied encounter. We rarely stand to sing. We do not reach out to shake hands, or to take the bread and cup.

In Numbers 11, the Israelites are on one of their classic complaining streaks, voicing that they are weary of the manna that they are provided…though it technically sustains them. In their weariness, they cry out to Moses, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” (Numbers 11:4b-6)

Like the Israelites in the desert, we grow weary of just having manna to sustain us–we long for the lively, embodied pre-COVID worship that is our custom. To be fair, I have not heard complaining at MMC! Just grief for the loss of what was meaningful for many. Longing for the richness and goodness of what worship can be. A deep desire for a refreshing worship diet that allows us to “taste and see that” our Creator is, in fact, very good.  And a longing to be sustained as we live and serve as God’s people in the world.

The grief and grappling of these days is real and disorienting. And we will be here awhile.  But the sliver of hope that I hold on to is that worship, now when it seems impossible and even futile, fuels resistance against despair, hate, violence, and greed.  Worship – even in virtual spaces – can inspire rootedness, loving-kindness, generosity, and truth-telling.  We are invited to gather whatever worship-manna we can for this day, and let it nourish us.

A Call to Worship, based on Psalm 86:11-17
One: Friends in Christ, we gather to learn, grow, and be shaped by God.
Many: Teach us your way, O God.

One: When we are uncertain or distracted,
Many: Teach us your way, O God.

One: When we feel crushed and hope is crowded out,
Many: Teach us your way, O God.

One: In our work, our play, and relationships,
Many: Teach us your way, O God.

One: And now, in this time of holy worship,
Many: Teach us your way, O God.