First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Writing the Last Chapter

At some point during my seminary days, I was given a bit of alternative career advice. Ministers who lose their vocation, I was told - who either violate professional guidelines, or who simply find their faith evaporating, and must pursue another line of work - often make successful and effective life insurance agents. The reason for this was alleged to be that ministers are accustomed to, and not afraid of, talking to people about death - specifically, their own deaths. This bit of folklore has stayed with me not only because it makes a certain kind of sense, but also because of what it assumes about the nature of ministry, and ministers. Whether I would in fact make a good life insurance salesperson I do not know, and by this point in my career I have some hope that I shall not have occasion to find out, but I do see the connection. One of the important parts of the religious leader's role is to be able to stand unflinching in the presence and prospect of death, and to be able to invite others who must confront that presence and prospect - which is everybody - to stand there with us. This morning I want to suggest that the undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch is right when he observes that the Death Expectancy Rate among human beings is precisely one to one, which means that our own death is certain, and to the extent that we have any connections among the community of living human beings, the chances are that we are also going to confront the death others, including those we care about. Therefore, we would be well advised to do what I would call our spiritual homework regarding these matters.

An increasingly secular, commercial, and medicalized culture has less and less guidance to offer us - either in the immediate moment of need when someone we love has died and we must make our way as best we can through the trackless wasteland of loss and grief, or even when we recognize, in moments of reasonably calm reflection the need to prepare for our own demise or anyone else's. As far as our society knows, death is a medical diagnosis, and bereavement is an industry. Now this much is true - death is a medical diagnosis, and bereavement is an industry - but those two acknowledgments do not address the range of human experience that is called into play in confronting the realities of our dying. Gone are the days when social custom, loosely predicated on some level of shared religious conviction, dictated the structures for disposal of the dead and behavior of the living. There is not much that anyone could do these days that would be widely disapproved, or considered shocking. One might think that this freedom from the pressures of artificial convention was a good thing, but I wonder. It is not necessary to be an advocate for hypocrisy in order to recognize the there may be some value in a guiding social consensus around these issues that we must all negotiate, usually with little personal experience to draw wisdom from. We certainly move through the process of our own actual dying only once, and it is entirely possible in our prosperous and health conscious era of history to be well into the second half of one's life before confronting death in any but the most abstract terms. Of course, there are no guarantees; teen suicide, drugs and violence, and active military service all produce their tragically young victims, with a corresponding cohort of youthful mourners. And these youngsters are in less of a position than their elders to make up the procedures of mourning from scratch; indeed, I would argue that they are owed a guidance they often seek and do not find - not so much the guidance of the counselor's office as that of ritual; a sequence of formal actions by which profoundly inchoate and inarticulate feelings might be given expression and meaning. The formlessness of complete freedom is not always the most helpful cultural context, nevertheless it is pretty much what we face when we are called upon to deal with the reality of death. I want to suggest that the emotional roller coaster of active grief is not the best place from which to attempt creative liturgical planning. This is, first of all, one reason why a professional minister can sometimes be a handy thing to have around, and second, why it is useful to give some thought to these issues in advance - to do the homework that I spoke of a moment ago.

In the absence of a culturally ordered structure for dealing with both the practical necessities and the emotional upheavals connected with death, there are three intuitive temptations into which people often fall; responses to the urgent enigmas of death that in the end are not especially helpful. I want to describe these three perspectives, which I consider mistakes, because each in its own way becomes an attempt to deny the reality of the power of death; in the words of Thomas Lynch, "...equally misguided efforts to get around rather than through the difficult business of mortality."

The first mistake is easily recognized; it is the one that most, though not by any means all, religious liberals have rejected. It is the outright denial which insists that death is not real, or permanent; that those who have died in fact go on living in another, usually better, world. This perspective asks the bereaved not to mourn, but to rejoice because the deceased is now happy, free of pain, in the presence of god. It offers the assurance that we shall meet them again in that new life after our own deaths. This refusal to acknowledge the finality of death also uses euphemisms - passed away, gone home, went to sleep - in order to avoid the stark reality of words like died, dead, corpse. It encourages the subterfuges of cosmeticized bodies displayed on feather pillows and innerspring mattresses, catering to the illusion of temporary sleep. Now, I must suppose that there is real comfort in the genuine conviction that our individual personalities do not perish in death, and yet it is to be seen that people grieve when their loved ones have died, no matter what their religious beliefs may have to say on the subject. To refuse to acknowledge the terrible sense of estrangement and change that is part of the experience of mourning does not help those who are going through that process. And of course, for people who do not accept the notion of an individual afterlife, it is bitterly painful to be subjected to such assurances, and asked to assent to them, or to respond as if they were comforting. The human condition needs forms of mourning that gently but firmly insist upon facing the reality of death; its devastating impact, its permanence, the inevitable sadness and pain of loss.

But refusing to avail ourselves of pretty stories that deny the fact of death, we can err in the other direction, a much more common mistake of religious liberals, by attempting to deny the significance of death. "It's just a natural part of life," we say, as if that true statement ought to mean that it's no big deal. "Don't make a fuss about me," we say, as if the observances of death ought to be a demonstration of our own modesty rather than a response to the needs of others. "Just toss me in a plain pine box, and stick me in the ground," we say, as if by this cavalier instruction we could both dismiss our own fears, and dispense with the awesome mystery that will confront our loved ones when they are called upon to deal with the absence created by our death. There is a false bravado in such studied casualness, that is in its own way as much an avoidance strategy as the painted corpse with its anticipation of a heavenly reunion. I tend to think that this is also true when the rituals of mourning seek to make the corpse disappear entirely, with an unceremonial immediate cremation, producing ashes that are never seen or formally disposed of, as if disembodied memories were the only appropriate, intelligent, rational residue of a life, and anything so physically tangible as a corpse, or its remains, were somehow beneath our notice. The truth is that the ancient taboos have wisdom to offer; there is power in the flesh of the dead, power to touch us at the raw wound of our loss, at the most vulnerable and irrational terror of our shared mortality. There is, I have observed, a healing transition that takes place in sitting with the body of one we have loved, an even more intimate, and primal and powerful, comfort in helping to wash the corpse, and to prepare it for whatever form of reverent disposal seems fitting in the circumstances. There is closure, difficult and painful, to be sure, but in the end helpful, in standing at the edge of the open earth, or in giving the ashes to the wind or water or soil. We neglect these observances at our peril, I think; at the risk of making our lives disembodied and disconnected, and squandering one of the most precious and powerful opportunities we may have to integrate body, mind, spirit, and world into a more meaningful whole.

There is no intelligence, no logic by which we can really make death trivial, our own or anyone else's. And if there were, it would be an evil thing to do; the first step toward an indifference about human life that would enable us to order death, and witness death, without compunction. We know what people with that ability are capable of doing, and have done, to the human community - why in the name of anything sacred should we seek to cultivate such nonchalance? To confront mortality is to stand in the presence of eternal mystery, of ultimate questions, of the deepest anguish we know, and our most primal fears. Let no one suppose that that is or ever could be a casual experience, or that it could be merely a joyful celebration of memory, or that it should be orderly or sensible. Grief is not orderly or sensible; our sorrows are the measure of our loves, and love is what makes us human; therefore our capacity for grief is one of the measures of our humanity. To seek to escape the full range of the experience of grieving is to seek to escape what it means to be human, which is something that surely humanists ought not to ask of one another.

And that brings us to the third mistake that we can make as we contemplate the prospect of dying, which is to deny it by trying to exert our control beyond the boundaries of our own lives, not trusting the care, the love, and the needs of those whom we will leave behind. Let me be clear that it is a good thing to make plans, for several reasons. First, we are more likely to have the last chapter of our lives unfold the way we prefer, if we provide some information to guide those who may be making decisions on our behalf. The more clearly our desires are stated, and the more prepared we are for various contingencies, the greater the probability that we will get what we want. No guarantees, of course, but if no one knows what we want - most especially if we don't know ourselves - it will all be a matter of guess work and chance. Second, it is a courtesy to those who may be called upon to care for us, and make decisions about our last days of life and the time of our death, to offer them information about our preferences. It is often comforting to the bereaved, when all other things are equal, to be able to say, "We know this is what he or she wanted." That knowledge gives meaning to choices that might otherwise be arbitrary, and the satisfaction of being able to honor such requests is healing. Finally, the process of thinking through the options of what we would like to have happen at the end of our lives, is in itself a spiritual exercise, for it calls us to confront our own mortality, and to consider the meaning of our lives. That can be an illuminating experience; remember the story of Alfred Nobel, who was accidentally reported as dead, and had the opportunity to read his own obituary in the newspaper. The recognition of what his life would be remembered for prompted him to use his fortune, gained in the manufacture of explosives, to establish the Nobel prizes in an effort to benefit humanity. Sometimes such an abrupt change of course can come of thinking through how we want to be remembered, and how we are likely to be remembered given our lives thus far. The recognition of my own mortality always reminds me to stop wasting my life in pettiness, complaint, and idleness. Sometimes the exercise reveals an old hurt, or a ruptured relationship, that should be healed before the opportunity is lost. Sometimes we just gain a certain measure of courage and calmness from realizing that our lives are, after all, finite, or perhaps a sense of connection to the rest of humanity and the living world, knowing that, as Lewis Thomas says, "We all go down together, in the best of company." Whatever comes out of the process for you at a given moment, it is likely to be in some way illuminating. For all these reasons, I encourage everyone to consider attending the luncheon and workshop this afternoon following the assembly, sponsored by Compassion and Choices, where you can work on living wills, advance directives and other health care forms, powers of attorney, and other provisions for your choices at the end of your life.

All that said, however, the reality is that it is impossible to anticipate every possible circumstance and contingency; we can exert our control of the world only so far, and it is both impossible and wrong for the dead to seek to bind the hands of the living. We can ask, we can testify, we can suggest, we can provide for, but in the end we can only entrust ourselves to the process of living and dying, and to the care of those around us. To think otherwise is to seek by the illusion of control to deny the reality of what it means to die, which is to leave the world in other hands than our own. In the same way, it can be tempting for those who mourn to imagine that if only they could get all the details exactly right, if they could have things just the way their loved one wanted it, or in some other way perfect, that they could escape the pain of grief. Then it is important to understand that when we grieve, the pain is not because we are doing something wrong; indeed, it is evidence that we have done and are doing something right, indeed, something essential. It means that we have given ourselves in love and connection to another person, and when that person is gone, the severed connection is necessarily painful.

The truth about death is that it is never predictable, controllable, logical, or neat. It is forever a great mystery on the landscape of human experience, and when we attempt to deny it, we throw away an important part of our humanity. Grieving is a messy business, as so many of you have honored me by sharing your losses with me profoundly know. When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, whether that death be our own or someone else's, there is no roadmap, and the path is never clear. The reality of death calls us to an adventure of the spirit; we have no way of knowing at the beginning who we will be at the end, but it is a safe assumption that we will be different, in some important, painful, and enlarging way. Writing the final chapter is a process that unfolds by faith - not the faith of another world, but the faith that holds you here in this one, seeing and telling the truth of what you find, what you feel, what you know, which is almost never what you thought.

We are always in the process of writing the final chapter, of course; all the choices and chances of our lives inform what will be, eventually, the meaning of our death. What is up to us to decide is how intentional we are, how conscious we are willing to be, when we contemplate our own mortality, and when we confront the losses that inevitably shape our lives. The poet Rabindranath Tagore puts it this way:

On the day

when death will knock at thy door

what wilt thou offer to him?

Oh, I will set before my guest

the full vessel of my life

I will never let him go

with empty hands.

All the sweet vintage

of all my autumn days and summer nights,

all the earnings and gleanings

of my busy life

will I place before him

at the close of my days

when death will knock at my door.

May the vintage indeed be sweet, on the day when death shall knock at thy door, and may we each write the final chapter in truth and without fear, just as we would all the pages that come before. Let us sing.