Spirituality | Hank Dunn

Compassionate, informed advice about healthcare decision making

Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category

“How effective is chemotherapy?” — That is the Question

Posted September 1, 2022 by [email protected]

Would you spend $100,000 on a cancer treatment with many painful side effects that might help you survive 6.24 months as opposed to 5.91? That is 10 days longer in greater pain and suffering?

What if the doctor told you just that “this treatment will help you survive longer”? This is a true statement even though you might only survive 5.6% longer. That IS longer.

I have just discovered two great videos with Dr. Michael Greger discussing this very topic. Each video is less than seven minutes and worth every minute of your time. One is called “How Effective is Chemotherapy?” and the other is “How Much Does Chemotherapy Improve Survival?”

Let me be clear. I have no idea what I would do if I had a cancer diagnosis. I have close friends and family members who had advanced cancers and have been treated very successfully and are living active lives years after their treatments.

On the other hand, I have had patients, and, again, close friends and family members who received brutal chemotherapies and died. Many of those seemed to have received no benefit from their treatments and suffered great burdens. Many patients go bankrupt in order to pay for treatments.

Dr. Greger, in the first video says, “A large proportion of cancer patients reported their willingness to declare bankruptcy or sell their homes to pay for treatment. I mean, look, aren’t the high prices justified if new and innovative treatments offer significant benefits to patients? But you may be shocked to find out that many FDA-approved cancer drugs might lack clinical benefit.”

In his second video he referred to a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. “In fact, the most expensive drug they looked at, the one costing $169,836 a year, did not improve overall survival at all, and actually worsened quality of life. That’s $169,000 just to make you feel worse with no benefit. Why pay a penny for a treatment that doesn’t actually help?”

I am NOT giving medical advice here. I am encouraging all of us to ask questions of our physicians. If a recommended therapy is said to improve survival, ask, “How much improvement?” Is it just 10 days over six months while suffering uncomfortable side effects? Ask about cost. Would I be willing to spend my financial legacy for those 10 days?

This all reminds me of the importance of our own emotional and spiritual preparation for dying. When “our time” comes we will be ready to die… or be healed. Either way, we’re okay.

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Cover Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

Alone into the Alone — “A Grief Observed” Revisited

Posted August 18, 2022 by [email protected]

Why?

Why, late in his career, would an internationally famous Christian author publish a personal memoir under a pseudonym? He hid both his identity and that of his beloved wife. Why?

I was leaving on one of my daily bike rides recently and needed to pick a new book to listen to. I selected a reread — A Grief Observed (1961). But, the author was identified as N.W. Clerk in the original rendering. Only after his death in 1963, was it published as by C.S. Lewis.

So, I am peddling the hills of Oxford, Mississippi, and I am being reminded just how good this book is. Between 1940 and his marriage in 1956, this confirmed bachelor wrote his greatest works including The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56), and Mere Christianity (1952). His brief four-year marriage to the terminally ill Joy led to A Grief Observed.

Lewis traced his wife’s life with cancer, then death and then his grief in this very thin volume (my copy has 53 pages of text.) Only, she is not “Joy,” who became his wife when he was 57 and she 41. In A Grief she is “H.” Her full name was Helen Joy Davidman, thus the “H.” They were actually married in the hospital where she was receiving treatment.

Here is a sampling of this grief journal by one of the 20^th century’s greatest writers and Christian apologists.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.”

Years ago, I had memorized this first line of the book. C.S. Lewis starts his journaling describing how grief feels to him. He keeps this up on every page.

“For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.”… “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”

How many times have I heard this? I have to remind grievers “you never ‘get over’ grieving.” Lewis sees it as a series of emerging phases always recurring. He likens it to a hike through a valley.

“Meanwhile, where is God?… But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

This might come as a surprise to those who found Lewis’ writings on Christianity so helpful. He had doubts. He didn’t doubt the existence of God but that his beliefs did not take away the pain of grief. He had no time for the “trust God and all will be good” line of thinking. Perhaps, this is why he wrote under a pseudonym. Doubt was so far from the assured Lewis.

“It is incredible how much happiness, even how much gaiety, we sometimes had together after all hope was gone.”

Here seems to be a great contradiction. In the midst of no hope for cure, Lewis and his wife had great happiness. There is a scene in Shadowlands, the biopic about their life together and her death. Lewis tells Joy not to talk about her impending death. He doesn’t want to spoil their good time together. She says, “It doesn’t spoil it, it makes it real.… I’m going to die and I want to be with you.… The pain then is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal.”

“She said not to me but to the chaplain, ‘I am at peace with God.’ She smiled, but not at me. Poi si torno all’ eterna fontana.”

These are the last words in A Grief Observed. He was able to witness the exchange between his dying wife and a chaplain. She was at peace. He closed with a Latin line from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In English, “Then she returned to the eternal source.”

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Cover Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

More Nothing than Something — True Solace is Finding None

Posted July 29, 2022 by [email protected]

I was such a scaredy-cat at 8 years old. All I can remember of two particular movies in 1956 was that I kept my eyes closed during the entirety of each film. I have just discovered, through Wikipedia, that Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and The Werewolf were released together as a double feature that summer. Who knew?

Bingo. Those were the two movies of my childhood fears. I was sitting through 160+ minutes of terror.

From my youth, outer space and the heavens brought a recuring sense of awe. Yes, the fear of flying saucers invading was real. But, there was also a sense of reverence as I gazed into the night sky. I was pretty small in the vastness of the stars above.

I just placed the latest “deep field” photo from the new James Webb Space Telescope to my home screen on my iPhone. This is a time exposure photo of a portion of the night sky the size of a grain of sand held at arms-length. Thousands of galaxies appear as we look back billions of years. Each galaxy has billions of stars — each star is not unlike our sun.

We come out of childhood, hopefully, putting away childhood fears. We gain a sense of control of our own lives. I am somebody. That is, until….

That is, until something reminds of how small we really are — how we really are not in control. Serious illness ranks up there with things that shake us to our core.

The Deep Field photo brings so many thoughts to my mind. What is really amazing is that there is more of nothing than there is of something. More empty space than stars. Perhaps “nothingness” is more important than “something.”

Even down at the microscopic level, scientists tell us that the is more empty space in each atom than solid matter. Doesn’t make sense when you fall on asphalt after a spill off your bike, but, I have to take the experts at their word.

The point is that emptiness and nothingness are where we live. Yes, I am glad I have family, friends, community, and this beautiful earth to enjoy. But, I also feel at home in the vastness of empty space or the silence which is a space empty of sound.

It is the message of the mystics and the dying have been telling us since the dawn of time. I am reminded of Gretel Ehrlich’s comment, “True solace is finding none. Then, of course, it is everywhere.”

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The Rise of Cremations and Our Need to be with the Dead

Posted May 13, 2022 by [email protected]

While we were planning a funeral for her 22-year-old son, Scott, she put down her beer, took the cigarette from her lips, and said, “So, I remind you of the Virgin Mary?” A lighter moment amid grief. Scott died from a long and debilitating illness. He may have weighed 80 pounds in the end.

I lived a few doors down from Scott and his family for four years. His sisters babysat my kids. I was Scott’s den leader in Cub Scouts. As disease ravaged his young body, Scott graduated from college in a wheelchair. I was so privileged to be a part of his care.

In Scott’s last days, one of my fellow chaplains called me as he was preparing to leave town on vacation. He was aware I was an old friend of Scott and his family. He asked if I could check in on Scott and even do the funeral if he died. I was glad to do it.

On my second visit to see Scott in our hospice in-patient unit, I could tell he was taking his last breaths. His mom and sisters were at his side. He had been in such great pain that he was totally sedated. His breathing stopped. The tears flowed after months of anticipating this moment.

I summoned the nurse. She asked Scott’s mother, “Would you like to hold him?” Of course, she would. It had been months since she could even touch him because of the pain.

The nurse gathered the sheet around Scott’s body and placed him in his mother’s lap. She held him tenderly, stroking his face, and telling him of her love. I later told a friend of the scene and he said it reminded him of Michelangelo’s Pietà. It was indeed a very similar scene, a mother cradling the body of her broken son.

A few days later, I told Scott’s mother about my friend’s comment. That’s when, beer and cigarette in hand, she said, “So, I remind you of the Virgin Mary?”

This experience came to mind as I read a Washington Post story about the stunning rise in the use of cremation. Now, 57% of our dead are cremated compared to 27% just two decades ago. Along with the traditional casket burials, Americans are having less to do with the dead. Many have no rituals at all surrounding the death of one they love.

Undertaker Author Thomas Lynch

Many want to avoid the greater expense of a traditional funeral and burial. But, perhaps, many want to avoid being around the dead body or the emotional strain of the rituals. Thomas Lynch, a Michigan poet and funeral director of 50 years said in the Post article, “People want the body disappeared, pretty much. I think it reminds us of what we lost.” In the United States, Lynch notes, “this is the first generation of our species that tries to deal with death without dealing with the dead.”

I will say, there is another trend that runs counter to this criticism that we Americans are avoiding the dead. More and more people are dying at home which gives the family the opportunity to be with the departed. A century ago, almost everyone died at home. This can provide that ritual lost with the demise of the traditional funeral.

Rest in peace.

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The Brutal Truth of Growing Through Grief…It’s Normal

Posted May 4, 2022 by [email protected]

Barbara Lazear Ascher’s husband gave her the news in the most straightforward way. “Looks like pancreatic cancer,” he told her matter-of-factly after the test results came back.

She and their friends gave him a wonderful death. They had theme parties with matching drinks. “Dying was intimate, and I drew close,” Ascher writes in her moving memoir, “Ghosting,” “We were single-minded, welded together in the process of this long leave-taking.”

This is how David Brooks starts a recent piece in The New York Times, “Some People Turn Suffering Into Wisdom.” I might as well borrow from one of the best. Brooks often writes about living life — its goodness and the difficulties. In this one, he covers the landscape of grief and trauma and moving on.

This kind of disorientation is brutal … and normal. Grief and suffering often shatter our assumptions about who we are and how life works. The social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman notes that many people assume that the world is benevolent, that life is controllable, and that we are basically good people who deserve good things. Suffering and loss can blast that to smithereens.

My few (and relatively small) hard knocks in life taught me years ago about the lesson of impermanence. That is — all things change. The grief that follows loss bumps up to this piece of wisdom. This is normal. I have written before about my habit of journaling. I didn’t say then that I tend to journal more and with more passion when things are not going so well in my life. Brooks introduced an exercise to use journaling to tell our stories differently.

Gradually the process of re-storying begins. This is taking a now fragmented life and slowly cohering it into a new narrative. The social psychologist James Pennebaker has people do free expressive writing, sometimes for just 20 minutes a day for four days. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar, he advises; just let it flow — for yourself. In the beginning, people who take part in expressive writing exercises sometimes have different voices and handwriting styles. Their stories are raw and disjointed. But their narratives grow more coherent and self-aware as the days go by. They try on different perspectives. Some studies show that people who go through this process emerge with lower blood pressure and healthier immune systems.

I never took my blood pressure and can’t quantify how much, if at all, journaling helped me. I would have to go back through the losses in my life and do it over WITHOUT journaling — no, thank you. But I do agree with Brooks. Some people take grief and loss and make a new life.

Gradually, for some people, a new core narrative emerges answering the question, “What am I to do with this unexpected life?” It’s not that the facts are different, but a person can step back and see them differently. New frameworks are imposed, which reorganize the relationship between the events of a life. Spatial metaphors are helpful here: I was in a dark wood. This train is not turning around. I’m climbing a second mountain.

David Brooks’ most recent book is The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.

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It’s Your Choice: You Can Change Your Views of Aging and Improve Your Life

Posted April 15, 2022 by [email protected]

I seldom picture myself becoming a demented, incontinent, and disabled patient in a nursing home. My future may indeed look like that because both of my parents ended up in such a state. On top of that, I cared for hundreds of such patients as a chaplain. Many of them were my current age (74) or younger. Why not me?

I did prepare for such a future, having bought long-term care insurance twenty years ago. Again, my parents’ aging convinced me to get the policy. They both used every dollar from their nursing home insurance benefits.

Choosing more positive aging

An article I read recently prompted these thoughts. It was titled, “It’s Your Choice: You Can Change Your Views of Aging and Improve Your Life.” Here is how it starts:

Becca Levy, a professor at Yale University, studies the way our beliefs about aging affect physical and mental health.(JULIA GERACE)
“People’s beliefs about aging have a profound impact on their health, influencing everything from their memory and sensory perceptions to how well they walk, how fully they recover from disabling illness, and how long they live.

“When aging is seen as a negative experience (characterized by terms such as decrepit, incompetent, dependent, and senile), individuals tend to experience more stress in later life and engage less often in healthy behaviors such as exercise. When views are positive (signaled by words such as wise, alert, accomplished, and creative), people are more likely to be active and resilient and to have a stronger will to live.”

Being blind is “wonderful”

I remember asking an 80-something-old patient at the nursing home what it was like being blind. She said, “Wonderful. You learn so much being blind. I can tell who is coming into my room by the sound of their footsteps. I listen to talking books. It is just one learning experience after another.” That lady would be one of those resilient folks mentioned in the article.

Judith Graham of Kaiser Health News interviewed Yale professor Dr. Becca Levy about her newly-released book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live. The bottom line is that if we have a more positive and hopeful view of aging when we are younger, we will more successfully move through those years to the end.

In the interview, Dr. Levy gives several suggestions on assessing our attitudes and how to develop more positive ones. Maybe someday I, too, can say being blind is “wonderful.”

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My Problem with “Happiness is a choice”

Posted April 7, 2022 by [email protected]

I am tempted to say that the cliché, “Happiness is a choice,” is wrong on the surface. But, over and over again we see people endure great hardships and they choose not to be overwhelmed. I am reminded of Viktor Frankl and his “last of the human freedoms.” The following appears in my book Light in the Shadows:

“This idea that we have a choice in our happiness is not original with me. Viktor Frankl is the one who told us this is the ‘last of the human freedoms’—the freedom to choose how we will respond in any given set of circumstances. He was a Jew and a psychiatrist who learned about this freedom as a prisoner in several concentration camps during the Second World War. Hear his words:

“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action.… Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.… We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

“[I]n the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.… I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.… It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, New York: Washington Square Press, 1984, pp. 86-87.)

“The sort of person we become is the result of an inner decision and not the result of the influences of… cancer… the illness of a child… divorce… disability.

“A thought for this day: When the circumstances seem to be overwhelming, I will know I have a choice in how I am going to respond. I will not blame my illness, or other people, for how I feel inside.”

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“God has a lot of explaining to do.”

Posted March 24, 2022 by [email protected]

The daughter started her eulogy, “I am so angry. God has a lot of explaining to do….” I sat there, stunned, now wondering how in the world I could follow such a performance.

I’ve had the opportunity to officiate many funerals over the years. This was supposed to be one of the “easy” ones. The dead man’s family had a relative who once was a member of my church in Vienna, Virginia, back in the day. None of the family attended that church now — or any church. So, when the man died suddenly of a heart attack at 64, they turned to us for a minister to conduct the service — kind of a rent-a-preacher.

Our pastor was out of town, and it fell to me to fill in. It sounded straightforward enough. They just needed me to be an emcee, so to speak. The daughter would do a eulogy, and we would open the floor for others to give tribute to the recently departed.

As I met with the daughter and granddaughter to plan the funeral, they made it clear that this family was not religious and did not want a lot of God-talk. They agreed to a prayer and Psalm 23. That was that. No sermon. Little religion. I would just show up at the funeral home, conduct the service, get paid, and go home.

I walked into a whole new world

When I entered the funeral home before the service, I walked into a whole new world (for me, at least). At the front of the chapel, a NASCAR flag draped the casket. The deceased’s helmet sat on top — a tribute to his years as a driver on the small-town racing circuit. Scores of people milled around, some laughed, some cried.

Vince Gill

Overhead speakers pumped in country music. Vince Gill sang, “I know your life on earth was troubled / And only you could know the pain… Go rest high on that mountain / Son, your work on earth is done.”

People took their seats in the pews, and I started the service with a few opening remarks. Then it was the daughter’s turn. “I am so angry. God has a lot of explaining to do. My father was a good man. He had no enemies. He loved his children and grandkids. He worked hard and provided for us. God has a lot of explaining to do.”

This was no time for theological argument

As she spoke, I sat there running through my mind things to say to offer another view of her father’s sudden, unexpected death. I thought about referencing Rabbi Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kushner believed some things, including some deaths of people we love, just happen at random — a belief I share. But obviously, this was not the time nor place to get in a theological argument.

Then the wisdom of Fr. Seamus O’Reilly came to mind. As he talked to his parishioners about the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, which some Catholics believed was punishment for sin, the wise priest said:

“God always forgives.
“Humans sometimes forgive.
“Nature never forgives.”

The man had died from a malfunction of his heart. Nature requires that our hearts pump life-giving blood in our veins. This man died of natural causes. “Nature never forgives”? No, that wouldn’t do.

Bless her heart — she was deeply grieving

The daughter’s angry tone did soften partway through her speech. It was clear she was an adoring daughter. She gave a touching and loving tribute to her father, as good a eulogy as I had ever heard from a family member. But she ended where she began, “God has a lot of explaining to do.”

When my turn came, I know I started with, “Death is always a mystery…” and kept it brief. I was speechless after witnessing this woman’s pain. I think everyone else was speechless, too, because few spoke when I opened the floor.

I’m always amazed when those who claim not to be religious will often blame God for tragedy. The funeral could have been a wonderful opportunity to be thankful for the great gift of the time she had with her father. But, bless her heart, she was deeply grieving the loss of her beloved father. I felt so sorry for her that her hurt had turned to anger.

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Can a POW have a “Good Death” Hundreds of Miles from Home?

Posted February 10, 2022 by [email protected]

A young soldier named William Gaston Barringer turned 18 on October 5, 1862. Less than three months later, he was wounded and died as a prisoner of war 200 miles from home. Yet, there is evidence he had a good death. How could this be?

Barringer’s marker caught my eye as I wandered around St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi. The epitaph, “I was not afraid to die; my Mother taught me to pray in early life,” got me thinking about what it means to have a good death. (See my “Hank’s Deep Thoughts” video at the monument.)

Let me clarify; a “good death” does not mean that it was good that William died. Death to the young is, of course, a tragedy. And, as a POW, he likely did not die in ideal conditions.

Being a prisoner of war was not mentioned on the monument. I did an internet search and found him on a list of soldiers who died in captivity, hundreds of miles away in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

A “good death” through the centuries

Plagues in the 1300s killed 40-60% of the European population. Such widespread death led to the release of a couple of books known as the Ars moriendi (“The Art of Dying”). These were Christian instructions on how to have a good death. There were accompanying woodcuts, like one showing demons tempting the dying man with crowns symbolizing earthly pride.

By the American Civil War (1861-65), the dying and their families knew what was expected. Drew Gilpin Faust identified four elements of a good death in her moving book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War. According to Faust, a good death in the 19^th century was one where the dying person:

Was conscious
Was not afraid of dying
Was prepared spiritually to meet their maker
Left dying words for the family

Even the atheist Charles Darwin, who died in 1882 in England, kept to this script. He told his wife on his deathbed, “I am not the least afraid of death—Remember what a good wife you have been to me—Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me.”

Though a reference to spiritual things was conspicuously absent, Darwin was conscious, was not afraid of dying, and left last words for his family. In my interpretation, he wanted to emphasize that even though he had no spiritual leanings, he was still “not the least afraid of death.”

Much has changed since the Civil War, including our expectations about our deaths. Today, medical literaturedescribes what many now consider a good death: being in control, being comfortable and free of pain, having a sense of closure, etc.

This sense of control has recently manifested itself through eleven U.S. jurisdictions adopting medical aid in dying. In those places, patients can ask a physician to give them medication to hasten their dying.

Back to Mr. Barringer

The words on Barringer’s marker were an assurance to his family that he died a good death: “I was not afraid to die; my Mother taught me to pray in early life.” These seem like the dying words of a conscious man.

And there it is. William was conscious, he was not afraid of dying, he was prepared spiritually (thanks to his mother), and these are the words he left for others. I can imagine his mother visiting this monument often in her grief and being consoled, “At least he had a good death.”

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A Year of Reading on Faith, Doubt, and a Way Forward

Posted December 29, 2021 by [email protected]

This year, I consumed more than forty books. Their topics ranged from spirituality to science to the Civil War to race to books exploring my Southern roots. I surprised even myself with the number. In the coming weeks, I will share what I read in other fields, but here are a few books I read on spiritual themes:

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (2015) By Rachel Held Evans.

I regret to say that I had not heard of Evans until 2019 with the news of her sudden, unexpected death at age 37. The outpouring of grief and respect by those whose lives she had touched got my attention. We shared common roots in White, evangelical fundamentalism that no longer fit our adult hearts. Here’s a sampling of her journey: “Faith isn’t just meant to be believed, it’s meant to be lived and shared in community.” “Christianity isn’t a kingdom for the worthy—it’s a kingdom for the hungry, the broken, and the imperfect.”

Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It (2021) By Brian D. McLaren.

This is a good word for all the doubters out there. A former pastor and author of more than twenty books, McLaren encourages doubt and reframes it as the key to a more mature and fruitful faith.

Why Religion? A Personal Story (2018) By Elaine Pagels.

Over a decade ago, I was planning a long road trip and asked my friend, Wayne (who collected the best books on CD), to pick a book for my trip. Wayne handed me The Gnostic Gospels (1979), and I was hooked on Pagels’ insightful writing about early Christianity ever since. I went on to read Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003) and Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (2012). Although written by a historian, these books led me to a deeper faith. In Why Religion? she shares her faith journey following the deaths of her son and husband within a year of each other.

Devotionals

I have been a fan of devotional books for years. It’s easy enough to commit to read a page a day. I have read Merton, Rumi, Rilke, Lewis, Tolstoy, and Melody Beattie. I read these two this year:

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations (2011) by Matthew Fox.

My friend, Myra Bridgforth, introduced me to this book as we co-led a silent retreat on the topic. Each entry starts with a quote from a giant of Christian mysticism: Dorothy Day, Meister Eckhart, Howard Thurman, Teilhard de Chardin, and many you have never heard of — or, at least, I never heard of them. Then, the mystic for our times, Fox, offers his spin on the quote.

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and The Art of Living (2016) by Ryan Holiday.

This does sound boring, doesn’t it? I started this a couple of years ago and quit after a couple of weeks. I picked it up again in January and, WOW. I will finish it on time for the new year. Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and other dead Romans share their wisdom that is just as relevant today.

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Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category

“How effective is chemotherapy?” — That is the Question

Alone into the Alone — “A Grief Observed” Revisited

More Nothing than Something — True Solace is Finding None

The Rise of Cremations and Our Need to be with the Dead

The Brutal Truth of Growing Through Grief…It’s Normal

It’s Your Choice: You Can Change Your Views of Aging and Improve Your Life

Choosing more positive aging

Being blind is “wonderful”

My Problem with “Happiness is a choice”

“God has a lot of explaining to do.”

I walked into a whole new world

This was no time for theological argument

Bless her heart — she was deeply grieving

Can a POW have a “Good Death” Hundreds of Miles from Home?

A “good death” through the centuries

Back to Mr. Barringer

A Year of Reading on Faith, Doubt, and a Way Forward

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (2015) By Rachel Held Evans.

Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It (2021) By Brian D. McLaren.

Why Religion? A Personal Story (2018) By Elaine Pagels.

Devotionals

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations (2011) by Matthew Fox.

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and The Art of Living (2016) by Ryan Holiday.

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