January 2014

People Need Some Good News

5 Comments / Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Missional Church, Uncategorized / By /

Yesterday I got to meet with my “Peet’s Ladies,” fellow gym enthusiasts who gather daily for coffee at Peet’s next door after their workouts. They saw me through the window coming into the coffee shop, and it was a joyful reunion. We sat down for a cuppa and caught up with each other. My prayer list for each one was renewed, and they were encouraged to see me with their own eyes and know that I was doing well. During all this treatment for my lung cancer since November, I have had a steady parade of home visits from friends, […]

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The Lost Keys

3 Comments / Lung Cancer, Personal, Sermon Illustrations / By /

Somewhere and some time last fall, I lost my car keys and accompanying house key. Thank heaven my church keys were on a separate ring at the time. It happened just about the time I was finding out about my cancer, still in the hub-bub of unpacking from a long vacation, switching purses, re-organizing for “normal” life.  Because I wasn’t driving once treatment started, the car key was not needed; but the house key had sentimental value because it was covered with Stanford logos. A small thing, I know, but I was ticked to have lost it. For a long

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The Acceptance of Tragedy

4 Comments / Current Events, Death & Dying / By /

Our newspaper has been covering two tragic situations in the last month, that warrant some reflection in light of my previous series on dying and death. The first involves a fourteen-year-old girl Jahi McMath, who died after sudden complications from surgery to remove her tonsils and repair sinuses. I—and the state of California—say she died, because in the course of this medical emergency, her brain ceased all function to the point of “brain-death.” This is not a permanent vegetative state but the complete stoppage of all neurological activity in all areas of the brain. The complicating factor was that she

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Waiting to Die, or Living to Death?

9 Comments / Death & Dying, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Sermon Illustrations, Uncategorized / By /

Several years ago, on the occasion of her 80th birthday, a parishioner intimated that she was the longest living member of her family at that age. Her vision of her life had not extended past that point, as every single one of her forebears had died early and suddenly or, in one case after a long illness at age 72. Since she did not know what to do with life after 80, and had no inclination to reinvent herself, it appeared to me that she was simply marking time and waiting to die. At the time, she was in perfect

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Prepare to Die—Part III

Leave a Comment / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

For the last several days, we have been considering the process of dying and death itself, trying to push through our denial of our mortality. I have been enriched by your comments and candid reflections on the topic, realizing January is a busy month and death is probably not your first-choice topic! Yesterday was an amazing day for me, with death absolutely not on my radar screen. After a lousy weekend, I was feeling so good by yesterday, I spent virtually the entire day on the phone, doing “work”! I even had energy left to go to our small group

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Prepare to Die—Part II

3 Comments / Death & Dying, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Pastoral Call / By /

Can’t help but start today’s post with the most famous quotation from Princess Bride (with heavy Spanish accent): “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” He gives that warning several times in the classic movie, enough for the viewer to know that nobody is actually going to die any time soon. But the line cracks my funny bone. I am serious today, however, when I say, “Prepare to die.” I am going to die. You are going to die. It may not be anytime soon . . . [Just for the record, my progress

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Prepare to Die—Part I

2 Comments / Death & Dying, Lung Cancer, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

An interesting article appeared in Sunday’s Contra Costa Times in the “Your Life” section of the paper, entitled “Coffee, cake & grave conversation.” It described a Death Café, a hosted conversation about death and grief in Santa Cruz, California (one among many in California). The group’s purpose is to formalize discussions “to help ease the anxiety around death and dying.” As I read the article, it appears that the intended benefit is spiritual and practical, as people share and learn about various burial options, celebratory rituals, and advanced directives. It reminds me of a series of adult classes we used

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From This Life to the Next

6 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Theological Reflection / By /

Yesterday’s post relied heavily on Tom Wright’s formulation of what happens when we die. In an attempt to gather all the data, he has come to the tentative conclusion (not having been there himself) that our entry into eternal life happens in stages, and that “eternity” itself—existence outside the parameters of time—actually doesn’t start until Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. In other words, life after death involves waiting. Mind you, one is waiting in a “good place,” paradise, but the culmination of God’s cosmic history is still in the making. This period of waiting

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Dying and Death Is a Transition

4 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, Theological Reflection, Uncategorized / By /

In my contemplation of death, my own and yours—both happening some time in the future, today or decades from now—I have been grappling with the question of why it is hard to die, and we will come back to this in a day or two. We struggle through a process of grief, starting with denial of death itself. Today, I’d like to examine what we have been trying to avoid our whole lives, what is going on when we die. The topic is huge, so I start today with biblical input and some interpretation from N. T. Wright. Tomorrow, we’ll

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Denial of Death Gets Us Nowhere

5 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, Personal, Theological Reflection / By /

Ernest Becker wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book call The Denial of Death in 1973. I was required to read it in seminary, and its basic message has stuck with me all these years. I am re-reading it now, and finding it more accessible than ever, given my current lung cancer situation. His basic thesis is that all humans have in common a fear of death, and that controlling this anxiety is one of the most powerful motivators of human behavior. This fear is so terrifying that people “conspire to keep it unconscious,” and replace it with conscious, persistent efforts

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