sirguessalot

thanks for putting it out there, Jbarrax. i think its safe to say that different theologies lead to different conclusions, and im guessing we probably don't quite agree on the meaning and nature of words like "God," "Christ," and "conversion"...which is ok with me. English is a wild and unruly language, imho. i dont see the contradiction between newness of life coming after contemplation of death. St. Paul referred to the seed that dies in order to live. Jesus died so life could follow. I would go as far as to say that newness of life does not come until after death. Even conversion is referring to some sort of death.

no worries about the unintended puns, e. and yeah, the hospice people standing around may not get many things...which is why i often prefer older hospice eras for better examples and practices. Most of modern hospice has been reduced to a specialized focus of a very short fragment of a much longer process we call aging and life in general. In other times and places, if one was fortunate, they picked their chaplain at the first sign of a gray hair, and then developed that relationship til the end. Not some stranger that comes in during the last days or hours. But a friend whose walked with you (and probably your family) awhile. Also, deeper roots of religions and "spiritualities" involved cultivating "a relationship with death" from our youth as a way to develop wisdom, sanity and compassion. Lifelong avoidance of the topic is like waiting til the last minute to cram for a test...if we are even lucky enough to wake up after so long a time. I am sad to say that such avoidance has been a norm in our culture for a long time, though harder times ahead may change that. A lot. More than I could touch here, now. But i will try to say a few things that have come to make sense to me. for one, as with other "inner "spiritual" pains" (such as meaninglessness, hopelessness and loneliness), "unforgivenesses" tend to get hotter/heavier/worse as we age and near the end of our life...if they are not healed. The "crimes and sins" and feelings and facts about them will be The hottest topic of conversation, whether the conversation happens or not. And if the bastards die without some sort of resolution, and we can't bring ourselves to forgive them, it will keep coming up til the end of our days, too. This is one reason why talking to them (not necessarily supernaturally, either) has such a long history in the grief process. And to me, a big picture view of hospice includes caregivers who are skilled in more than just pain relief or making the moment special for everyone, but it includes helping the dying and their relations address and resolve forgiveness issues (or meaning, hope, and relatedness issues). Because 1) time is running out fast, and 2) the deathbed is a prime motivater and opener of such changes, and 3) the effects of NOT healing those issues last a lifetime...or more. Which is why I am of the opinion that the more we understand and apply this bigger picture of such hospice-related arts, the healing of all fields will be viral. Because everything us humans are doing to make the world a worse place connects to our relationship with dying, those four basic kinds of suffering, and they way this suffering stacks up and is passed on to the living. edited to add...If big/deep/wide change is to happen, that end-of-life window is the "most fertile" moment of radical transformation for everyone involved. and...spot on cman.

Not to belittle or dismiss the horror, but even all that seems like some sort of valuable insight to me. Especially this: "Hospice told me that people usually die...exactly the same way they lived." And I'm glad the word "usually" is in there. But yeah, there is an old saying that "the art of living and the art of dying are one." And...paraphrasing from memory here...in the end of her life, Dame Cicely Saunders, who revived Hospice and then brought it to America, said that most of the modern hospice movement had been co-opted by the western medical mindset, and that it had failed to live up to the quality and skillfulness of care found in previous eras. From what i've seen and learned, I can't help but agree. Like ive said...the arts are mostly lost. Missing from our institutions, from our cultures, from our churches, from our hospitals. Example: If the best "medicines" for "forgiveness pain" are not even on the list of approved treatments/medications, or missing from the care-giver/chaplaincy training, or missing from the ministerial/pastoral curriculum...how can it even be treated? or... If rites of passage to help men move through stages of life are not recognized as valid, how can we avoid having generations of selfish old fools dying poorly and leaving nearly unforgivable messes? How can we diagnose, let alone treat such dis-ease if we do not understand how we got here...or that we are "here" at all? like i said...i'm praying for rain.

truly sorry to hear about that, e. i respect you not wanting to talk about it. i wouldnt. but i will say, like i said, seems there is no guarantee anyone dies well. or forgives. it is not a given...and then that typically leaves us holding the forgiveness bag to work out...which is a friggin lot. and then there is no guarantee we work it out at all either...which basically sucks all over again. as if forgiveness, or lack thereof, is not merely personal...it can also be passed on through the generations. hate and revenge can last centuries...even millenia. if there are arts/sciences to this forgiveness stuff...i hope it comes down like rain someday. and it just may.

thanks, Kit. what a story. Such a clear example of how, as i've often posted around here from time to time over the years, this (dying, hospice, loss, grief, etc...) is the primary (most fertile and direct) context for understanding whatever wisdom scripture has to convey. Not that we can't glean important and valid insights about other things in life...but the deepest roots of the books are in the arts of dying, imho. This is why they were written. And not just by the death of a person, but also in the death of a worldview, or the death of an institution...even the death of an empire, or an era. Most all of our favorite scriptural words (forgiveness, grace, redemption, atonement, etc...) are most vividly clarified and realized in light of such threshhold experiences. As in the story of Helen, the potential for deepest wisdom comes from touching something ultimate...and nothing less. And while there is no guarantee we will be paying attention in these moments...the motivation/invitation to pay attention is never greater. The potential for changing something that seemed impossible to change is never greater. thanks again for posting it.

im stuck with... neither yes nor no, and both yes and no ... btw, when i am logged in, if i click on "view" to the right of percentages, i can see who voted.

it seems the possibility of the non-existence of an ultimate foe can be scarier than the existence of one. and maybe an ultimate foe is relative and temporary, at best. quite depends on who you ask...and when.

could it be that there is no ultimate foe...and all foes are perfect shadows? perhaps even our misunderstanding of all this is perfect.

maybe compare Fowler's stages of faith development with Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development if nothing else, it seems that the morality of scripture, research and life is neither absolute nor static...but more musical and gardenlike. we are angels on ladders in dreams. a perfect wild mess.

imho, the financial earthquake/meltdown/tsunami heading our way is a more immediate threat than the others. and while many older folks are closer to leaving anyway, and waxing apathetic...the youth are not, and they could use some help with the future before you go. and stockpiling essentials is not as good as knowing how to make/gather them. close-knit neighborhoods can keep gangs at bay. the government is not your friend. welcome to 3rd world america. good luck

imho, comparing Maslow's hierarchy with other developmental hierarchies (James W Fowler, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Erik Erikson, Clare Graves, Jean Gebser, Don Beck, etc...) helps understand the different values and strategies in play. The various models are looking at different hierarchies, which also helps to see how we are developing in multiple ways at once (moral, cognitive, ego, social, etc...), so that people with high cognitive or social intellegence may also come from a low moral base. and yeah, twi, like a lot of secular leadership in our society today, puts the least developed (morally and otherwise) in charge of the more developed (aka more "mature" or more "wise"), and even rewards lack of development. Such as how egocentric people will do things other more developed folks will not do to get into positions of power over others.

FWIW...a few things i currently understand... the "arts of dying" are perhaps the most important/least understood contexts of scripture in our death-avoiding culture. VPW, TWI and PFAL has a bad case of it, resulting in much harm. imho, it is lack of this context more than any other that has led to such a wide variety of interpetations and grasping at straws. re-read the epistles as writings to an emerging order of monks/nuns doctors/nurses midwives/chaplains preparing to become better caregivers. "physician...heal your self" by "dying daily" = being devoted to a contemplative practice and lifestyle as a way to do less harm to the world in general. Dying is the ultimate spiritual experience. "enlightenment at gunpoint" ...the last rite of passage and opportunity for transcending the ego and tasting radical grace, even if it is but a brief peak experience. the quality of our "leaving" has quite a ripple effect. there can be profound healing, in spite of not having a cure, in the end-of-life experience. where words like grace, mercy, atonement, redemption are experienced directly in spite of the words we find to describe them. they cease to be mere translations and concepts. my best guess is that "turning to the wall" is much like "entering into the closet to pray"...an inward contemplative perspective, i this case, brought about by utter failure of external circumstances (aka "dying"). Priorities and perspectives shift radically when one is facing the end. and sometimes a change of perspective may even result in a renewed will to live that extends life for a little while longer. i dunno. i wish i were a better writer. perhaps some of this rings true for you.

both, and

seems appropriate... (all) please forgive me i forgive you (all) thank you (all) i love you (all) goodbye (all) and... bas sona! (may you have a happy death)

i think Wordwolf has a valid point easy enough to over-correct and end up in a ditch also easy enough to over-correct in response to the over-correction and end up in a different ditch on the other side meaning, the rabbi has a valid point, and has maybe stated it a bit too simply just sayin

not that any of us are or are not Hindu, but this reminded me of Lila as if in the end of all our search and struggle, if we are fortunate enough to find such freedom, we find that we are free to serve God and God's universe by way of playing. like "at play in the fields of the Lord" can we not even play at "going to hell?" :B)

this thread is taking an interesting turn. there is nature, Nature and NATURE...as in "the NATURE of the universe" not only transcended, but transcended and included. the general pattern of human history ("biblically" and otherwise) follows a pattern of 1) fusion with nature, 2) seperation from nature, then 3) reintegration with nature. enmity with the natural is the middle step, where form is seen as evil and dirty and otherwise wrong and bad. anti-earth, anti-human and anti-"sin". our destiny, as the most famous jewish man pointed out, is the end of such enmity and dualism. not achieving ONEness, for ONEness is already always the NATURE of ALL...but remembering ONEness. noticing it.

update: one thing leads to another and now i am teaching a series of classes on integral art theory...which is basically a mixture of drawing and poetry, although it also applies to everything from sculpting, architecture, holiday celebrations and gardening. so...similar invitation to any GSCers in the Portland area...or even those interested enough to travel farther for it. PM me for more info. +ODD

sadly...twi's attitudes towards death, dying, illness, grief and the dead and such is a much wider socio-cultural phenomenon. They just had a very bad case of it. not the worst though. we are currently living in the wake of a century of deep denial and avoidance of such things, and have more or less lost touch with most all the "arts of dying" (aka living)...so i find that it helps not to take it personal...or at least merely personal. ive seen similar patterns in many mainstream churches, jewish and muslim and buddhist faiths, secular families and organizations, "new age" spiritual groups, even hospitals and counselers. such as the "flat positivism" that is currently in vogue. good news...is that we have been dying a very long time...and we know very much about it in our very bones...and so God, our intuition, and the rest of the universe responds a thousandfold when we actually do lean into the flames of it all. And not just with our own, but in relationship to others who are...which is the majority of how we experience it anyway. anyway, feel free to pm me if it makes sense to. i may know of a few helpful things.

some rabbis ive studied with and known say that "yahweh" is not a name, or a word, but represents the sound of breathing. in light of this, ive yet to meet one who does not say God's name constantly...even in their sleep.

i think this is where the breath comes in historically, practically and otherwise... and why it is typically the entry point to notice for yourself what the body-soul-spirit nameset is pointing towards. not breathing in a specific way, necessarily, though there are other arts of that but simply paying close attention how we are breathing as a highly effective place to start noticing our objective, subjective and more aperspectival parts. not in theory, or words, or thoughts, or with a machine, or on paper ...but from where we are now. if Jesus's "breath holy spirit" instruction, for example, is anything like the compassionate one-pointed breath meditations of Buddhists or Celts (both of which already "evangelized" the area centuries before), it may be that he was instructing them to do the same kind of things. No, not because he was buddhist or irish, but yeah, because he was as buddhist and irish as the sand or stars. as if to say "sit down, shut up, close your eyes and breathe for awhile. and pay attention to what is happening, for that is who and where you are." traditional preparation for the second half of life. seems most of us moderns have been bred and trained to want to remain in the first half of life the whole time though (like in twi), so we have very few social and cultural permissions to do the things that were the bread and butter of much of historic christianity. body soul and spirit were more like supernatural powers in pfal. kindergarten stuff. ... ok, im done for awhile. too much can be said, no? thanks again for starting the thread Twinky.

and yeah...dare we say that there is "the eye of God" which sees "the eye of spirit" like the sky that sees the winds. or the ocean that sees the waves. or the forest that sees the trees. even the shop that sees the yardsticks. a nondual perspective where that line between "spirit of God" and "spirit of man" is felt to be temporary, at best. where that line between God and man, or anything for that matter, is seen a brief momentary illusion that most naturally begins to end somewhere midway between womb to tomb. first a lucky glimpse, like an unborn chick interpreting a crack in its egg for the first time. maybe even this is the perspective that guys like Jesus, Moses and Buddha where experiencing when they said "I am." a glimpse of post-human consciousness or state of awareness, which is also our original state of consciousness, as well as the ongoing background of our every moment...and our inevitable destination.

seems so to me, Roy perhaps like how in a yard there is 3 feet, but also 12 inches in each foot. and then even finer fractions. there are many parts of parts of body, and many parts of parts of soul, as many parts of parts of spirit. or like looking at a mountain chain from the upper atmosphere...all we can see is the major mountains....but if we get closer, we start to see the hills and finer distinctions between the primary ones. like looking into smaller and finer aspects of biology, or the deeper layers of the psyche, or even fuller and fuller views of "spirit" that extend "beyond the end" of "the yard stick." plenty of other analogies, all with their natural limits, but perhaps it conveys. even further though...perhaps our view of body, soul and spirit can then be multiplied to a more pluralistic view of "bodies, souls and spirits".

yeah...maybe more like 3 views of the same "event." as some have put it... the eye of the body sees the body, the eye of the soul sees the soul, the eye of the spirit sees the spirit. or, a objective/physical/biological/exterior view of the human experience, a subjective/psychological/inward view of the human experience, and then a view of the pre-existing unified field that both of those are happening in, often called things like "the Witness" or "I Amness" or "the mind of Christ" and such. I personally like words like Gebser's "aperspectival" for this because the word is relatively new and has not been fragmented into so many hundreds of definitions and applications. and so, maybe after all the mountains of energy is spent, the conventional quantum thinkers and tinkerers will finally see with their machines what some ancients saw from their naked human animal selves. if so, i guess at least we will finally have a photograph, and not just some poetry of some hermit on a mountain. so perhaps it will be worth it after all.