Danse Macabre
Thoughts on Death and Memento Mori
from a Hospice Chaplain
N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
Danse Macabre
Thoughts on Death and Memento Mori from a Hospice Chaplain
Copyright © 2011 N. Thomas Johnson-Medland. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
This book is dedicated to Mom-Mom who used to tease the daylights out of me with her wonderful sense of humor, to Pop-Pop whose depth of character is embedded in my soul; and, to my paternal grandparents whom I never knew. I still reach out to all of you in my living.
You are a part of this in a very real way.
“Remember the day of your death. See what the death of your body
will be like. Let your spirit be heavy, take pains, condemn the vanity
of the world, so as to be able to live always in the peace
you have in view without weakening.”
—Abba Evagrios, “The Apophthegmata Patrum”
“God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.”
—Nikos Kazantzakis, “Zorba the Greek”
“A person needs a little madness,
or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.”
—Nikos Kazantzakis, “Zorba the Greek”
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
—Samuel Johnson, “Boswell: Life”
“That we must all die, we always knew;
I wish I had remembered it sooner.”
—Samuel Johnson, “Letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all of the hospice patients and their families I have had the good pleasure to serve. Your open integrity as individuals helped reveal the common nature to all of our suffering: we are all in need of love. Sometimes I cannot believe the things that you revealed to me about the wonder and awe that lie under every stone and every piece of dust in this life. Life is itself amazing; death seems to be a continuation of that same amazement. I have felt you all in my life at one time or another.
Thank you Elisabeth for always causing me to think. There is always one more perspective and one more vantage point from which to view things from. You helped me to discover these by teaching me to listen and to hear; to look and to see.
And, thank you to the Centennial School District in Bucks County, PA for showing us the filmstrip “Danse Macabre” every year at Halloween. Apparently, it changed my life. View the filmstrip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd0w4L5i828
Preface
Danse Macabre is a manuscript I have been writing—off and on—over the years in my work with the dying. I began to realize that modern man is hidden behind a series of fears when it comes to death. Part of this comes from lack of knowledge, part from failure to discuss death.
In the advent of the splintering of religion and faith (into denominations and sects) there is no one solid or consistent dogmatic approach that is held or taught across the whole of a religious or faith-based society. The great Catholic, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires (to name a few) had massive structural programs of belief and practice that unified them over space and time. Most often they used laws to maintain an epic and whole system.
This splintering has occurred in all faiths; in all religions, and in all cultures. This is true with every major religion and sect in America, as well as around the globe. It is also true with every culture, ethnicity, and gathering of people. The splintering of faiths, cultures, ethnicities, and gatherings into factions allows for an immensely divergent stream of thought and belief to emerge from the new diversity. It also poses conflict. This is true surrounding the stories we tell about death—our beliefs.
The experiment of the American melting-pot of cultures (faiths, ethnicities, and gatherings, too) has also added a more diverse population to the social/cultural mix and discussion of “death and dying in America”. We live and thrive with people of many faiths and many factions within those faiths; with many cultures and many sub-cultures within those cultures. This immense and rich milieu of religion and culture adds layers of complexity to some of the silence surrounding death, as we fear intruding or causing arguments. Add to that the sudden onslaught of information from every known corner of the globe as a result of our invasive and all pervading technologies in the digital age. We can know anything and be anywhere all of the time.
How are we to live in a multi-cultured society with layer upon layer of divergent belief surrounding us at every turn? How are we to share a common life in such close proximity with immense disparities—immense disparities that are worldwide and all inclusive. We are continually barraged with news from the entire hamlet or village, but that hamlet has become the universe, that village the cosmos. That is huge.
The work I have compiled is my own rendering of my days while taking care of dying people. I was involved in the spiritual care of dying patients and their families for almost twelve years. These words and these stories come from the work I did in and among them. I have added my own personal forays into dealing with personal deaths in my own life. I have also added my own thoughts around my own dying. I have carried, what I can, into the discussion that comes from the panoply of cultures I entered into in the care of the dying.
My hope is that these candid and simple stories about death will enable individuals and communities (families and faiths, and people with no faith) to begin to talk about the mythologies they share about death. It is also my hope that it will open communities to sensing where the need for healing exists in our lives with death. Surely, we are dancing with death throughout the whole of our lives.
Introduction
I wonder why when every single human being on the planet—and every other living thing as well—is moving closer and closer to death, we do not talk about death more often. I also wonder why we do not spend more time trying to make our deaths more meaningful.
For the most part, we spend our time avoiding death at all costs, and avoiding any mention of or thought about its reality. But you know it has got to be impacting everything we do or think. Just because we do not mention something or process that thing verbally does not mean that that thing will not drive and inform everything we do. All it means is that it will drive it and inform it from the subconscious world. From that place, we are less likely to gain power over our fears. From that place—the subconscious—we are more likely to be eaten alive by the dragons we have repressed.
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