Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the death of self

“If your spiritual guides do not talk to you about dying, they are not good spiritual guides!” (p. 85)

Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Death, both physical and metaphorical, should find its way into our conversations, especially in spiritual circles, in Christian churches. There are both the death of the Old Adam in us, and the death of our bodies. Both are “real death.” Talking about either can make people feel uncomfortable, but it is so much better to have them out in the open than to hide them in the closet or under the bed.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

diminishment is growth

from a prayer within the text: “When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more my mind); when the ill that is to diminish or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at the last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive in the hands of the great unknown energies that have formed me; in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fiber of my being to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.”

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012, pp. 50-51.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

thrilled at death

Note:
When death has lost its sting for us, we look differently at death. Christians, especially, should have a lighter-hearted view of death than many of us have. Sure, there’s sadness at the separation, but we know that the deceased is with God. With God! Isn’t that what all our religion and spirituality is all about?

And just for the record, I haven’t gotten “excited” at a funeral as Quenon professes he gets, but I do know the comfort there is in having full confidence in the resurrection. It’s helpful to know that for the recently-deceased “the real fun has just begun.”

Quote:
“This is partly why a strange exhilaration usually comes over me when somebody I have known well in the community dies. It feels like a cutting free and a circling around. The feeling comes strongly at the end of the funeral. After the final blessing, when the bier is lifted and carried toward the west door to the burial ground, I get excited like a boy getting out of school for the summer–a thrill that the training has ended and the real fun has just begun.” (p. 8)

Source: Quenon, Paul. In Praise of the Useless Life: a Monk’s Memoir. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2018.