As You Grow Older, You Can Grow Wiser and Healthier.

Modern Western medicine is beginning to accept the benefits of ancient Chinese experience. We, though the help of Eastern and Western science, can benefit from both.

I have taken the following suggestions from Kenneth S. Cohen’s excellent book, “The Way of Qigong and the Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing”. According to this concept, the goal of each human is to become a wise and healthy “Sage”.

1. The sage is true to his or her nature, neither compulsively following nor rebelling against rules of conduct. The sage is capable of expressing emotions, including anger, as necessary and appropriate to the situation. He or she practices self-acceptance and is thus more accepting and understanding of others. The first step in self-acceptance is giving oneself permission to feel what one is feeling, especially if it is anger; then inner resistance and friction is lessened and much of one’s anger is already gone.

2. The epidemic of heart disease in the West may be symptomatic of our society’s preoccupation with “enjoyment or excitement”. Excitement places sudden demands on the heart. The heart is over-stimulated by our quick pace of life: by listening to and watching frightening new reports, TV violence, and having an over-infatuation with sex and romance. The most extreme form of excitement and thus the most damaging emotion for the heart is emotional shock, whether from a negative event such as the death of a loved one or from a positive event, like winning the sweepstakes. The heart likes peace and quiet. It needs a feeling of security in order to keep an even pace as it pumps energy through the body. To enhance the feeling of security, calm down, take long walks, turn off the TV and cut down on the news.

3. The spleen is damaged by pensiveness. Your inner energy becomes knotted and stuck. Pensiveness means excess concentration, and obsessive preoccupation with a concept or subject. Excess empathy also harms the spleen. Empathy is similar to compassion. The American Heritage Dictionary defines compassion as “Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.” Empathy means that we also identify with that person’s suffering. Empathy is considered excessive and damaging to the spleen when we lose a clear recognition of boundaries, when we feel distraught and upset by someone else’s problems. Pensiveness and excess empathy, the two qualities that harm the spleen and our health, are related. When we are pensive we are preoccupied with ourselves; we are overly empathic when we are preoccupied with others.

4. Each of the major internal organs can be damaged by emotional excess. However, there are also positive emotions that can help heal the organs. The lungs are healed by “righteousness”, the sense of living with integrity and dignity, which gives your self and others a kind of psychological “elbow room”, room to live and breathe. The kidneys are healed by wisdom, by a clear perception and self-understanding, a sure antidote for irrational fears. The anger of the liver is mended with kindness. The excitability of the heart is balanced by peace, calm, and orderliness. The spleen is healed by trust, faith, honesty, confidence, and a deep belief in oneself. Trust is openness and acceptance, a feeling that emerges when one finds a common ground with another.

5. And my final advice: Lose your mind and come to your senses! Spend more time in nature, seeing nature as a positive model of health and balance. The earth supports all kinds of life, impartially and without attachment. Let your mind become quiet and your senses open to the environment. Such a cure may seem too simple, non-technical, perhaps even naïve. However, it works!

What Does It All Mean?

I have been trying to find the ultimate of the meaning in life as I grow older. Recently, reading William Saroyan’s play again, “The Time Of Your Life”, his opening lines in Act 1 seem to do as fine a job of expressing what life is about as I have found:

”In the time of your life, live – so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man (or woman), nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of your self. No man’s guilt is not yours, nor is any man’s innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness (selfrighteousness) , but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle. … In the time of your life, live –- so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

Trust The Chaos.

I now has this statement framed in my room. It is something I can finally live by:


On what do we
Trust our own
actions
in life?

Being right?
Being wronged?
Or attending the
Improbabilities
And always insufficient
Knowledge that requires
Being okay with the
Self-doubt of faith?

Always be reminded how
eccentrically and suddenly a
human being can be so greatly
self-convinced of imagined
wrong and how, just as
eccentrically and suddenly,
it can also be true that in the
wink of an eye, some new
grace will be born.

A Stone Is Melting In My Heart. Letting go.

How to choose without getting trapped:

1. Make the most of every experience.
2. Don’t obsess over right and wrong decisions.
3. Stop defending my self-image.
4. Go beyond risks.
5. Make no decision when in doubt.
6. See the possibilities in whatever happens.
7. Find the stream of joy.

1. The experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion.
a. Meaning: if the moment truly matters to me, experience it fully.
b. Emotion: If the moment truly matters to me, bond with it.

2. Go with it and make the best of it.

3. Release myself from my self-image; be free to choose as if for the first time.

4. Go beyond risks; there is infinite intelligence in the hidden dimension of my life.

5. Get in contact with my essential self; make the decision then.

6. Go back to my basic principles:
a. Adapt to my desires.
b. Keep everything in balance.
c. Harmonize my individual life with the life of the cosmos.
d. Be aware of what I am doing.
e. See the consequences of my actions.
f. Make my life as real as possible.

7. Find the joy in my existence, the joy that is free of any good or bad choices.

Finally – Review my life and list my good and bad choices. Realize that good often comes from bad choices. Celebrate the good results and be thankful for them.

We Can Transform Ourselves.

“Invocation.
The day hanging by its feet with a hole
In its voice.
And the light running into the sand

Here I am once again with my dry mouth
At the fountain of thistles
Preparing to sing.”
W.S. Merwin
The Moving Target

How can I change? How can I learn to sing? How can I become someone new, wiser, able to create a more youthful energy to not only transform myself, but to help others transform their lives as well?
It seems so difficult; but poets like W.S. Merwin, extraordinary people who think outside of the box of life, can give us the vision to begin our own pursuit of self-transformation.
And Deepak Chopra, another extraordinary person, can also help us add strength to this quest. In his recent creation, The Book of Secrets, he suggests that inner transformation works according to the principles that make up the universe’s operating system. When you consciously align with them, you give yourself an opening for self-transformation.
I am going to try these principles. I am inviting you to come along on this transformational quest:

I will write down the ten principles as they personally apply to me and will begin to live them. I will carry them around with me and refer to them as reminders every few days. I believe that it’s better to focus with attention on one principle a day then trying to work on too many of them at once.
1. The events in my life reflect who I am:
I will apply one experience today to myself. Whatever catches my attention is trying to tell me something. If I feel angry with anyone, I will see if what I dislike in the person actually exists in me. If an overheard conversation catches my attention, I will take those words as a personal message. I want to find the world that is inside me.
2. The people in my life reflect aspects of myself:
I am a composite of every person who is important to me. I am going to look upon friends and family as a group picture of me. Each stands for a quality I want to see in myself or want to reject. Yet in reality I need to realize that I’m really part of the whole picture. Then I can gain the most knowledge from those people who both I intensely love and intensely dislike: The one reflects my highest aspirations; the other reflects my deepest fears of what lies inside me.
3. Whatever I pay attention to will grow:
I will take inventory of how I’m using my attention. I will keep a log of how much time I spend with television, video games, the computer, hobbies, gossip, work I don’t care about, work I am passionate about, activities that fascinate me, and fantasies of escape or fulfillment. In this way I will find out what aspects of my life are going to grow. Then I will ask, “What do I want to grow in my life?” This will tell me if and where my attention needs to shift.
4. Nothing is random—my life is full of signs and symbols:
I will look for patterns in my life. These patterns could be anywhere: in what others say to me, the way they treat me, the way I react to situations. I am weaving the tapestry of my world every day, and I need to know what design I am making. I will look for signs that show me my hidden beliefs. Do I meet opportunities for success or failure? These are symbols for whether I believe I have personal power or not. I will look for signs about my belief in whether I am loved and whether I deserve to be loved.
5. At any given moment, the universe is giving me the best results possible:
I will concentrate today on the gifts in my life. I will focus on what is working instead of what isn’t. I will appreciate the world of light and shadow. I will receive with grace the remarkable gift of awareness. I will notice how my own level of awareness makes me perceive the world I am co-creating.
6. My inner awareness is always evolving:
Where do I stand right now? How far have I come on my chosen path? Even if I don’t see immediate results outside myself, do I feel that I am growing inside? Today I will face these questions and honestly ask where I stand. I will experience my awareness not as a stream of thoughts but as the potential for becoming who I want to be. I will look at my limitations and boundaries with the intention of expanding beyond them.
7. The direction of life is from duality to unity:
Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it’s like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is; my own self. I will notice those moments of intimacy with myself, when I feel that “I am” is enough to sustain me forever. I will lie on the grass looking at the sky, feeling myself at one with nature, expanding until my being fades into the infinite.
8. If I open myself to the force of evolution, it will carry me where I want to go:
Today is for long-term thought process about myself. What is my vision of Life? How does that vision apply to me? I want my vision to unfold without struggle. Is that happening? If not, where am I putting up resistance? I will look at the beliefs that seem to hold me back the most. Am I depending on others instead of being responsible for my own evolution? Have I allowed myself to focus on external rewards as substitute for inner growth? Today I will rededicate myself to inner awareness. Knowing that it is the home of evolutionary impulse that drives the universe.
9. The fragmented mind cannot get me to unity, but I have to use it along the way:
Today I will focus on a long term plan for myself. What experiences of oneness can I look back upon? Today I will remember the difference between being at one with myself and being scattered. I will find my center, my peace, and my ability to go with the flow. The thoughts and desires that drive me are not the ultimate reality. They are just a way to get myself back to oneness. I will remember that thoughts come and go like leaves in the wind, but the core of consciousness is forever. My goal is to live from that core.
10. I am living in many dimensions at once; the appearance of being trapped in time and space is an illusion:
I will set time aside to be present with myself in silence. As I breathe I will see my being spreading outward in all directions. As I settle into my own inner silence, any image that comes to mind will be asked to join my being. I will include anyone and anything that comes to mind, saying, “You and I are one at the level of being. Come, join me beyond the drama of space and time.” In the same way I will experience love as a light that begins in my heart and spreads out as far as my awareness can reach: as images arise in my mind I will send love and light in their direction.”

Working on the principles of transformation listed above will be a slow and ongoing process for me. Yet I believe that over the next several weeks, they will grow more familiar and more comfortable.
Join with me in working on them in your life. I am sure that if we dedicate ourselves to this transformation process during the next weeks, you and I will feel the results in our own lives.
Soon, I will offer more ideas that will help our new lifestyle to prosper. Good luck!!

Learning To Give Oneself Away

Recognition

The bird of ash has appeared at windows
And the roads will turn away, mourning.
What distances we survived, the fire
With its one wing.
And I with my blackened heart.

I came home as a web to a spider,
To teach the flies of my household
Their songs. I walked
In on the mirrors scarred as match-boxes,
The gaze of the frames and the ticking
In the beams. The shadows
Had grown a lot and they clung
To the skirts of the lamps.
Nothing
Remembered who I was.

The dead turn in their locks and
I wake like a hand on a handle. Tomorrow
Marches on the old walls, and there
Is my coat full of darkness in its place
On the door.
Welcome home,
Memory.
W.S. Merwin, The Moving Target


Sometimes, what matters as one grows older isn’t what one has but what one gives up. As we age, our memories of who we were and what we have achieved informs who we are now. But our day to day lives, our essential ego, our identity of the present moment, the true reality of who we are at this new minute after minute, also moves along and changes with the years we continue to spend on this planet.
We no longer are who we were. We no longer have the youthfulness, the biological vigor we once had. We have lost old loves, passions and friends. We are strangers in an increasingly strange new land. As we age, we become more and more estranged and lost from our old self and our old, comfortable loves, fears, and the reassurances of our past lives. We need to pay more attention to this passing of the old and must begin to learn how to welcome and integrate ourselves into our changing lives.
Yes, it is daunting to realize that we are losing who we were and what we have accomplished, that we can even lose those sad, bad memories which previously continued to haunt us. And now, in our middle and later years, we have a new opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to create new passions and desires; and most important, we can find new friends, do new work, spend more time in sharing with others in our new, emerging later lives.
Now is the time to learn how to give from our present, older, and hopefully, wiser, hearts and souls. We are who we are now, at this moment, new persons who have the priceless opportunity not to die unhappily, dwelling in our past, but to begin again in this new age with new prospects. We need only to have the courage and acquired wisdom to grasp and squeeze every drop of joy, satisfaction, and yes, gratitude, with the last bits of energy and compassion we still have left in us.
What I am telling myself, and you, is that this is our new, probably greatest opportunity. Look around you, what needs to be done? Who around you needs your help, your companionship, your comfort, right now? What can still make you happy, a little more content; what can make you feel like you are accomplishing something that will make a difference to the ones you love, your friends, the homeless, the needy on your block or in your town?
People and causes need you. You have a new opportunity to change your life, change someone else’s life, the opportunity to let go of those old unhappy memories and create new memories for the new you who is still alive and still has the energy and the will to do something new, maybe even revolutionary.
Let’s get going! Let’s let go of those old, faded memories and find some new ones to take their place!

Back again.

I'm back again, and ready to go!

There comes a time in every person's life when we think we're nearing the end of life, and heck, let's just give up.

But, if we're lucky and maybe a little smart, we then think, the hell with that. While I'm still breathing, I'm still able to be doing. So let's get going and see where our last part of life can take us.

Mr. Michael Sabon, that great author of "Wonder Boys" and other fine fiction said: "I aught to have been welcoming the bright angel of disorder into my life like a pickling flow of blood into a limb that had fallen asleep." And I said,

"I have enough trouble being who I am, and not what I used to be, so ...

"It's about time I face the reality of "now" and the life I have left before me..."

PS: If you have trouble following this, just take a little time and think about. We'll carry on this conversation later ...

My Dream

My dream is to create a new college curriculum for Seniors (those people over age 65) and Disappointed Adults (people of any age who have lost their youthful dreams, and maybe jobs, and want to start their productive lives over again}.

Today, many colleges and universities (and some community colleges) have “Lifelong Learning Institutes for Seniors”, programs for folks who are bored with “retirement” and want to spend some of their empty time studying subjects they weren’t able to take as undergraduates.

For me and for many Seniors, “retirement” can be the first stage of obsolescing and dying. We have lost our “job”; we have said goodbye to co-workers and our productive way of life. We are cast adrift in a limbo of no work, no responsibilities, and no real reason to go on living. So we fish, we go on trips, we visit grandchildren, and we slowly but surely die of boredom. We become invisible to younger people, we become more and more repressed, depressed, lost in the free-floating debris of aging.

Yet, we may still have one, two, five, ten or more years of relatively healthy and vigorous life. But what can we meaningfully, productively do with those days? What can there be between productive youth/middle age, and retirement, sickness and death? Of what worth am I now, age 76 going on 77, in this amazing new era of youth, vigor and vitality?

Is it the right time to look at myself, and, and the people around me who are both younger and older? Can I breathe new life into myself and maybe into many of those who have retired from meaningful jobs and maybe from life? By helping them, can I help myself as well?

Can we indeed retire from retirement? Can we create new life, and maybe a new career at this advanced age? Can we find a new passion, a new purpose in our existence; to keep us awake, aware, and eager for another new day, a new year, perhaps another score of years?

I have a new dream to create a college curriculum for Seniors and other Disappointed Adults who are looking for a New Way in their own life.

I am starting to create an adult college level Creative Aging Seminar and organize it to help us discover our hidden potential with new possibilities and a new future in our own lives. I have found professional geriatric, psychiatric, medical, creative and financial experts who are eager to help us revitalize our lives. These Seminars can become reality in my town and in your town as well. All we need is a dream and the will to do it.

Want to join the Senior Adventure of our lives?

Contact me at: rreed@ram-mail.com

Thoughts On Dying

As we enter the present national debate about health care, with the “Deathers” screed against having an Advance Directive and scheduled payments for doctors who tell their patients about end-of-life care, may I inject my 2cents worth?

I am 76 years old, have been a hospital volunteer for three years, was a hospice volunteer for six years; I am now a team member of Compassion & Choices of Oregon, an eleven year old Oregon legislature-approved organization dedicated to providing compassionate life-ending assistance to Oregonians.

Most Oregonians who apply for our service are above average in intelligence, education, and the ability to think for themselves, so when their doctors confirm that they have less than six months to live and even palliative care cannot ease their agony, they have the legal and moral right to ask for our assistance.

Too many dying patients would not make this choice because most of us are terribly afraid of death. Ernest Becker, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, states in his book, “The Denial of Death”, that most Americans refuse to acknowledge their own mortality. They refuse to think about their own death, refuse to talk about it, and continue to cling onto life to such an extent that over a quarter of all health insurance funds is spent in the last two months of life; trying vainly to ward off death, we struggle to hold onto life in spite of death’s imminence, our body’s increasing pain and lack of function, the loss of our minds, and the bankruptcy of our families. We destroy not only the last remnants of our own humanity, but also the personal strength and finances of those we hold most dear.

We are so in fear of letting go -– of our consciousness, our life, and our sense of who we were and what we have accomplished – that our dying is a tragedy instead of a release, a celebration of whom we have been and continue to be.

I am dedicating the remainder of my life to assisting the few wise and courageous Oregonians who are not afraid of their own death, but instead, in their passing create a testament of graceful closure and a beautiful memorial to themselves, their families and friends, a privilege only few Americans now can legally choose.

Will you please help?

(For more information, see www.compassionoforegon.org)

What makes me who I am?

My name is Richard Ernie Reed. As a sexually abused, psychologically neglected child since I was ten months old, I have been facinated with the question of why do our adult friends and care-takers hate us so much that they visited all of the infinate unspeakable acts of anger and frustration upon us?

Recently I found the answer, in another poet's words. Don Marquis was a reporter, playwright and poet. His muse was a cockroach named Archie who wrote on the poet's typewriter at night about his love for Mehitabel the cat. One night he wrote about Mahitabel and Her Kittens.

well boss

mehitabel the cat

has reappeared in her old

haunts with a

flock of kittens

three of them this time

archy she said to me

yesterday

the life of a female

artist is continually

hampered what in hell

have i done to deserve

all these kittens

i look back on my life

and it seems to me to be

just one damned kitten

after another

i am a dancer archy

and my only prayer

is to be allowed

to give my best to my art

but just as i feel

that i am succeeding

in my life work

along comes another batch

of these damned kittens

it is not archy

that i am shy on mother love

god knows i care for

the sweet little things

curse them

but am i never to be allowed

to live my own life

i have purposely avoided

matrimony in the interests

of the higher life

but i might just

as well have been a domestic

slave for all the freedom

i have gained

i hope none of them

gets run over by

an automobile

my heart would bleed

if anything happened

to them and i found out

but it isn't fair archy

it isn't fair

these damed tom cats have all

the fun and freedom

if i was like some of these

green eyed feline vamps i know

i would simple walk out on the

bunch of them and

let them shift for themselves

but i am not that kind

archy i am full of mother love

my kindness has always

been my curse

a tender heart is the cross i bear

self sacrifice always and forever

is my motto damn them

i will make a home

for the innocent

little things

unless of course providence

in his wisdom should remove

them they are living

just now in an abandoned

garbage can just behind

a made over stable in greenwich

village and if it rained

into the can before i could

get back and rescue them

i am afraid the little

dears might drown

it makes me shudder just

to think of it

of course if i were a family cat

they would probably

be drowned anyhow

sometimes i think

the kinder thing would be

for me to carry the

sweet little things

over to the river

and drop the in myself

but a mothers love archy

is so unreasonable

something always prevents me

these terrible

conflicts are always

presenting themselves

to the artist

the eternal struggle

betweet art and life archy

is something fierce

yes something fierce

my what a dramatic

life i have lived

one moment up the next

moment down again

but alwayts gay archy always gay

and always the lady too

in spite of hell

well boss it will

be interesting to note

just how mehitabel

works out her present problem

a dark mystery still broods

over the manner

in which the former

family of three kittens

disappeared

one day she was talking to me

of the kittens

and the next day when i asked

her about them

she said innocently

what kittens

interrogation point

and that was all

i could ever get out

of her on the subject

we had a heavy rain

right after she spoke to me

but probably that garbage can

leaks and so the kittens

have not yet

been drowned

Don Mauquis

This was not just a cockroach jumping on typewriter keys. This is the truth. This is the way it is. One human being engendering another human being when he or she can't even cope with his own existence. How can we express the pain of how we feel every day, just trying to get by, just trying to exist in a world we don't even understand. And then to have another helpless, little, crying, wanting, demanding human being in the same room with us, making us feel so helpless

and insignificant. Come on, get real!

(Ya'Know poem.)

But what can we do? How can we cope? How can we stop killing the human beings we love and hate and don't know how to stop hurting? How can be begin to feel? How can be find that sane part of us to stop our pellmell progress to cultural insanity, listening to the thump of roadkill in the night?

(Road Kill poem.)

What do we do? We wait. We wait for wisdom. We wait for maturity. We wait for the day dad shrunk.

(The Day Dad Shrunk poem.)

The cautious ecstasy of freedom. An awakening. A touch of connectedness. And then maybe, maybe, I'll realize that I, and my pain, and my anguish, are not the only things in this would of mine. I will find that you and I are in this room together.

(You and I in this Room Togther poem.)

We are all together, here, now, forever. We are archie, we are mehitabel, we are her kittens. We are everything, and everyone, and all of the pain in this world is ours, and all of the joy, and all of the ecstasy, and the reality, of who we are, what we can be and what we can't be, for ever and ever and ever. Thank you.

Isn’t It Time To Change Who “You” Are?

Scientists are discovering that our brain is like an automated blackboard – the kind we had at school. Our blackboard is filled with information written when we were children, about how to live and who we are. Most of the information was written there by our parents and other role models, reflecting who they were and how they saw their prejudices, their expectations or lack of expectations about their future, their ability to be successful or not to be successful – all of it outdated (and for you, probably wrong).

So, your lack of success and happiness in life may not occur because of your life and your personal history, but is fundamentally based and directed on your parents’ and possibly their parents’ history of experiences with their fears, failures and frustrations. They just passed the pain on! And your little brain recorded it as if those experiences and feelings were yours!

But there is good news, too. The scientists say that the blackboard of your brain can be modified, maybe even wiped clean of all the false and misguided notions of who “you” are. You have the ability to re-define and re-direct the rest of your life; changing direction into a happier, less fearful and frustrating reality. You can learn to enjoy life in new ways, to embrace the wonder of every single day on your own personal terms. You no longer have to “should” yourself, no longer have to do what your old blackboard scribbles say you “aught to do”.

You have a well-spring of wisdom which flows deep inside of you that can inform, protect and encourage you on every step of your new path into your brighter future. With your blackboard of your past wiped clean, your intrinsic “intuitive intelligence” will allow you to write new, life-affirming information and directions on your mind’s blackboard which can transform the rest of your life.

And it works! I am finally learning how to wipe my minds’ blackboard clean. Others I know are doing it, too. It’s not difficult. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to join a church or a cult. Just be yourself, probably for the first time in your life.

I’ll give you your first clue. The rest will follow on my next blog.

But for now, just do this:

1. Sit down and relax.

2. Quiet your mind. Push away the past. Push away the future.

3. Begin to listen to your own deep personal store of wisdom.

4. Breathe in.

5. Breathe out.

6. Count your breaths.

7. Wait for the miracle.

Diary of a Dying Man – 1-15-09

      My thoughts are on dying recently; not just because I have reached my 75th birthday, but also because of the depressing headlines in the newspapers. And, I must admit, because of my six years as a hospice volunteer and my present responsibilities as a volunteer for Compassion and Choices of Oregon.

     But maybe because of this experience, I have learned to look at my impending demise and those of my loved ones and friends as one of adventure and celebration instead of denial and fear. Life and death are just two sides of the same coin to a spirit which may not die; but maybe find a new dimension in this universe of string theories and hope for something else after.

     A recent article in the New York Times has recently put me into this line of thought. It may interest you; in fact, you or a loved one might have had a similar experience. Please let me know of your experiences.

Richard Ernie Reed

rreed@ram-mail.com

 

In Defense of Death

By DAVID BROOKS

William D. Eddy was an Episcopal minister in Tarrytown, N.Y., and an admirer of the writer and theologian Richard John Neuhaus. When Rev. Eddy grew gravely ill about 20 years ago, I asked Neuhaus to write him a letter of comfort.

I was shocked when I read it a few weeks later. As I recall, Neuhaus's message was this: There are comforting things you and I have learned to say in circumstances such as these, but we don't need those things between ourselves.

Neuhaus then went on to talk frankly and extensively about death. Those two men were in a separate fraternity and could talk directly about things the rest avoided.

Neuhaus was no stranger to death. As a young minister, he worked in the death ward at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, a giant room with 50 to 100 dying people in it, where he would accompany two or three to their deaths each day. One sufferer noticed an expression on Neuhaus's face and said, "Oh, oh, don't be afraid," and then sagged back and expired.

Much later, Neuhaus endured his own near-death experience. An undiagnosed tumor led to a ruptured intestine and a series of operations. He recovered slowly, first in intensive care, and then in a regular hospital room, where something strange happened.

"I was sitting up staring intently into the darkness, although in fact I knew my body was lying flat," he later wrote in an essay called "Born Toward Dying" in his magazine, First Things. "What I was staring at was a color like blue and purple, and vaguely in the form of hanging drapery. By the drapery were two 'presences.' I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that ...

"And then the presences — one or both of them, I do not know — spoke. This I heard clearly. Not in an ordinary way, for I cannot remember anything about the voice. But the message was beyond mistaking: 'Everything is ready now.' "

That was the end of Neuhaus's vision, but not his experience. "I pinched myself hard, and ran through the multiplication tables, and recalled the birth dates of my seven brothers and sisters, and my wits were vibrantly about me. The whole thing had lasted three or four minutes, maybe less. I resolved at that moment that I would never, never let anything dissuade me from the reality of what had happened. Knowing myself, I expected I would later be inclined to doubt it. It was an experience as real, as powerfully confirmed by the senses, as anything I have ever known."

Most scientists today would say that Neuhaus's vision was the product of him confusing an inner voice for an outer voice. He was suffering the sort of mental illusion that sometimes befalls epileptics before a seizure.

Neuhaus took it the other way. While most people might use the science of life to demystify death, Neuhaus used death to mystify life.

When he wrote about his experience later, his great theme was the way death has a backward influence back onto life: "We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already under way."

Neuhaus spent the next days, months and years impressed by the overwhelming fact of death. This made him, he writes, a bit blubbery. "After some time, I could shuffle the few blocks to the church and say Mass. At the altar, I cried a lot and hoped the people didn't notice. To think that I'm really here after all, I thought, at the altar, at the axis mundi, the center of life. And of death."

It also made him almost indifferent about when his life would end. People would tell him to fight for life and he would enjoy their attention, but the matter wasn't really in his hands, and everything was ready anyway.

He quoted John Donne who also was changed by a near-death experience: "Though I may have seniors, others may be elder than I, yet I have proceeded apace in a good university, and gone a great way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever."

Cancer returned, and Neuhaus died last week. In his final column for First Things, he wrote again about his mortality.

"Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is much I hope to do in the interim."

This awareness of death, and of the intermingling of life and death, gave Neuhaus's writing an extra dimension — like a metaphysician who has been writing about nature within earth's atmosphere and suddenly discovers space.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

--

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

 

--The Talmud

 

 

Where Did I Go?

Look. See. Who is that, there?

Silver reflections of who I was, then.

When I looked like, me, or what I thought was me.

See, past the wrinkles, drooping jowls, baldness, sadness.

Way back then, way past forgotten memories,

Glum glimmers of almost beauty, almost hope, way back

To naivety, back in among the fears, the grave, puzzled, perplexed

Apprehension of long-ago youth.

I almost forget those days, but then, like now,

I remember

That I have forgotten so much when

 I see

That look.

The reflection, the silver reflection, looking at me, pleading,

Where did I go, where was the intersection on that lonely

Country road when I took the other path, the path

Curved, and bent, that lent shadows to such a bright day?

That led me away to somewhere else, a different me,

A stranger somehow, now looking out

From the mirror, my mirror, of

Who I was, where I was going, then, finally, finding me

Here?

When.

When a stranger looks at me and says,

“I have a tumor on my brain.”

When a friend cries, looking up from his bed,

“I will not see you again.”

When my doctor whispers to me from the operating table,

“We’ll have to see. Your prognosis is debatable.”

Only then do I begin my long inward journey into innermost

Dread, realizing I, too, must learn for myself what

It means for me, to be finally, permanently dead.

 

I’ve lived a long time, longer than most, been a host

To the terrors and triumphs, greedily eating my days

As if my cupboard overflowed, not realizing that one day

I would peer in and see dust and ashes of an emptiness

I only dreamed, riding nightmares of  denied finality.

 

But life, indeed, is real. And death, as well. One often comes to

A stop, before we learn how to really count this instant,

This minute, this day; not just the birthdays, not plan someday

To live, to be happy, to become a hero, to be remembered. 

But to live, now, now, now in this chaos of not knowing.

 

Do it, now. This instant. Be here, be present, ready to

Realize this one moment, this one hour, this one beautiful,

Bountiful day. This is

All there is. And this is

Enough.

 

So, when the doctor finally calls, and says,

“I’m happy to report that your prognosis is

Fine. You are

Clear. There is no

Cancer. No cancer. No cancer. You will

Live.”        

 

Now I can give myself the permission which I have never given

Myself. Yes, I can be alive. I can be the

Person who I always wanted to be. I am. I am

Me. Now. And that is good enough.

 

Time did not stop. It need not stop

Now. Maybe now I can finally begin

Living. I do have enough time, even if it is a just

A moment more. This is my only chore. To live,

Now.

 

When I look at myself again.

When I ask myself, “Do I have enough

Time? 

Am I good enough, just

As I am?

         Do you love me? Do I

                  Love me?

         Am I

                  Happy?

         Am I

                   Enough?

 

         Will I Reply:

                  “Just enough ?”

 

No.

“More than

Enough;

 

         Now.”

          * * * 

Denying The Inevitable

         “The hair on my head is leaving me, turning white with fear,

abandoning me bald and bereft, like rats on a sinking ship.”

 

Do I sound depressed, distraught, uncharacteristically negative? Probably. This is the day of the dreaded prostate biopsy; revelation and consequences, the lady or the tiger. The moment of truth.

We all expect to live forever, to deny the death that happens to other less fortunate folks. We will remain healthy, happy, pain-free, free from John Wayne’s “the Big ‘C’, the unmentionable, sly, evasive, nasty little bit of metastasizing catastrophe which people whisper about with averted eyes, and which fills the local newspaper’s obituary page with little paragraphs and out-of-date photos of lost strangers’ ragged endings of life.

But for me, dear Horatio, I was expecting a happier ending to my play, this dizzying performance under the spotlights, in spite of the man behind the scrim whispering “elevated PSL’s”. How will this drama play out on the operating table today? Will the hero have a happy-ever-after epilogue? Will there be another act? And for how long? And what does it all mean anyway?

 

                  * * *