Spiritual Sunday Last week I wrote about how my friend Alan, beset with cancer, has been exploring the meaning of love as his health fails. Here’s a beautiful George Herbert poem that captures Alan’s love for creation, his sadness that he must leave it, and (perhaps) his sense that his love may transcend death. Even […]
Tag Archives: death and dying
Finding Love while Dying
From time to time I bring you updates about my friend Alan Paskow, currently failing because of cancer. Julia and I visit the Paskows every Sunday night. Julia administers a Reiki massage to Jackie while Alan and I converse. In our recent visits, Alan is always in bed when I talk to him. Our conversation […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Altruism, Aristotle, Julian of Norwich, love, Molly Peacock, St. Paul, Thomas Aquinas | Comments closed
Life from the Vantage Point of a Deathbed
I haven’t updated you for a while on my friends Alan and Jackie Paskow, former St. Mary’s colleagues. Alan has been suffering from terminal cancer for close to three years now, and Julia and I visit every Sunday night. Julia performs Reiki massage on Jackie while Alan and I talk. This past Sunday, while […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, death of a child, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nature, Religion, Spirituality, Thomas Aquinas | Comments closed
In a Fairy Castle, an Invitation to Life
On Saturday I wrote about how Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the 14th century Arthurian romance, demonstrates that our fear of death keeps us from living as fully as we could. The Green Knight’s promise to us is that, if we change the way we approach death, we will live life with heightened intensity […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged living a full life, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | Comments closed
No Coward Soul Is Mine
Here is a resolute poem of faith in the face of death by Emily Bronte, who I wrote on this past week. When she died three years after composing it, she did so with a fortitude that showed that she wasn’t just spinning words. Perhaps it can fortify others going through tragedy and loss. […]
The Lord of Death Shows Us How to Live
Sports Saturday Today’s post is on the sport of hunting (I’ll get to the Super Bowl next week). I should warn you that some of the passages you will encounter will be graphic. They are taken from the 14th century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I am teaching at the moment. As […]
A True Poem about the End of Grieving
In addition to my regular classes, I am also teaching a course on novels by Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte at a local retirement center. The class has 15 students, all of them women, and I began it with several poems by Emily Bronte, the best poet of the sisters. A lyric about grieving hit […]
Searching for a Light in Death’s Cave
Spiritual Sunday Today’s post I dedicate to those who lost loved ones in the Arizona shootings—and to everyone else who has lost someone close in the past year or so. I offer up a poem by the 17th century poetry Henry Vaughan that gets at some of the mood swings that the mourners can expect […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Silence and Stealth of Days", "They Are All Gone into the World of Light", Arizona shootings, Henry Vaughan, Religion | Comments closed
Hope: Invisible before Us and Still Possible
At the end of yesterday’s memorial service remembering those who died in the tragic Tucson shooting, the president of the University of Arizona read a poem by W. S. Merwin, recently named our poet laureate. I found a copy of it on the University’s Poetry Center website, along with the following wonderful quotation by Merwin […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "To the New Year", Arizona shootings, Barack Obama, W. S. Merwin | Comments closed
