The Bible says in John 5:24-26: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.”

The featured quote for this episode is from Edgar Allan Poe. He said, "Even in the grave, all is not lost."

Our topic for today is titled "The Spirituality of Dying, Part 6" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- A Spiritual Reality

Those steps recommended by the Christian art of dying — expressing willingness to die, showing belief in Jesus, offering final thoughts and encouragements to family and friends, giving hope in the life to come — do more than create a peaceful and welcoming environment for the dying person. These actions prepare the spirit.

Repeated and intimate experience with the dying, over the course of centuries, taught Christians the necessary path to dying well. While everyone is different and these steps may not look alike from person to person, the general outline is the same. And Christian wisdom teaches that it works to bring a dying person on the right path from mortality to immortality.

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The Bible says in 1 Timothy 6:7: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.”

The featured quote for this episode is from Mark Twain. He said, "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

Our topic for today is titled "The Spirituality of Dying, Part 5" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- Letting Go

Jim’s renewed sense of purpose and spiritual vision came about with some difficulty. First, Jim said, he had to learn to trust that God would take care of his family. “I am a control guy,” Jim explained. “It was unfathomable for me to figure out how God could take care of my wife and kids without me on the scene.”

But reading Luke where Jesus talks about leaving family members behind for fidelity to Christ, Jim was struck by Jesus’ words. It was exactly what he couldn’t do. Jim said he heard God ask, “How much do you love me, Jim? Do you really love me enough to trust me to take care of your wife and your children?”

Once Jim had let go of his need to be his family’s sole provider, his family had a surprise gift for him. Early on Easter Sunday morning, a friend came to get Jim and took him to church. The pastor met Jim outside, and the three friends walked through the church doors together. Inside, his pastor gave Jim a program for the event that was about to take place. His pastor said, “Jim, you have about a hundred friends in there, friends of yours, friends of your kids. Your wife has put this together. All four of your kids are going to get baptized.”

That morning, Jim’s kids all gave their testimonies and were baptized. “It was just a little service for our family and for our friends,” Jim said. His wife also shared with their friends about the difficulties she had dealing with Jim’s illness, but also the strength God had given her to handle her husband’s death.

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This podcast will help you get ready to face the inevitable unpleasant things that will happen in your life — things like trouble, suffering, sickness, and death — the death of people you love and your own death.

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:1: “A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.”

The featured quote for this episode is from Natalie Babbitt. She said, “Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.”

Our topic for today is titled “The Individual, the Church, and the Ars Moriendi (the Art of Dying), Part 6” from the book, “The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come” by Rob Moll.

— A Beautiful Injury

As Donne’s final weeks attest, he remained spiritually alive even as his body neared death. He eagerly awaited and looked for his entrance to life with God. He prayed, and having let go of things on earth, began to clutch those of heaven.

Yet, while Donne died well, those who loved him still mourned. Good deaths, even the best of them, are terrible because they separate — if only temporarily — people who have intertwined their lives. So, Christian history teaches us, the good death still injures the community. Death, even the good or happy death, is a painful event. It is evil and not a part of God’s creation, though God can bring good from it. And those closest to the deceased, in particular, need their wounds healed.

Funerals and other Christian rituals following death are meant, in large part, to nurse those wounds and reunite a community that has fractured. Phillipe Aries describes the classic Western Christian behaviors when the member of a community died. It “solemnly altered space and time,” he says. Shutters were closed and other visible signals outside the house alerted neighbors to what was happening inside. Candles were lit, prayers said, and clergy visited and performed their rites to bind the wounds of the mourning. Neighbors and relatives visited, and when death occurred tolling bells marked the significant loss of a member of the community.

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The Bible says in Psalm 39:4: “Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am.”

The featured quote for this episode is from John Donne. He said, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

Our topic for today is titled "The Individual, the Church, and the Ars Moriendi (the Art of Dying), Part 5" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- A Public Event

As bells tolled across England and Europe announcing another death from the plague, Christians were reminded at every moment that death was a public event and instructive to the church. While death was a spiritual event, according to Christian tradition, it was and is not a private affair simply between a Christian and God. Indeed, the loss of a single brother or sister in Christ wounded deeply the community of faith. "No man is an island," wrote Donne in his Devotions, "every man is a piece of the continent."

Two characteristics of death in the Middle Ages, says historian Phillipe Aries in his one-thousand-year history of Western attitudes of dying, lasted until the end of the nineteenth century: its familiar simplicity and public nature. "The dying person must be the center of a group of people," says Aries. As late as "the early nineteenth century, when the last sacrament was being taken to a sick man, anyone could come into the house and into the bedroom, even if he was a stranger to the family."

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The Bible says in Psalm 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

The featured quote for this episode is from humorist Charles Bukowski. He said, "I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: I say, ‘Hello, how you doing? When are you coming for me? I'll be ready.’"

Our topic for today is titled "The Individual, the Church, and the Ars Moriendi (the Art of Dying), Part 4" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- A Dying Face

The early ars moriendi taught that the spirit of the Christian was quite alive, wrestling with angels and demons, even as the body died. Therefore, death was to be actively undertaken. Though Christians changed in their beliefs about what happens at the moment of death, they never dismissed the idea that the spirit was still active. Modern science teaches that in the process of dying, when death is not caused by trauma, a body actually shuts itself down. It does not simply stop working. Rather, organs prepare themselves to cease their function, like a factory closing shop by turning off the machines and sweeping before cutting the power. So our body, even while dying, is still working. In the same way, the spirit of the Christian is too.

For example, hospice workers often report seemingly strange events which, for them, are proof of purposeful living even in a dying person. Some wait hours or even days until they are alone before dying. Other times, those who are extremely ill may appear to doctors to be physically unable to live, without blood pressure or signs of breathing, yet they stay alive until certain words are spoken or certain visitors arrive who perhaps offer reconciliation or permission to die.

What nurses and doctors recognize today, Christians understood centuries ago. When medical techniques to prolong life were not available, says pastor John Fanestil, people were not so passive about their dying. "Those who practiced the ritual of happy dying near the turn of the nineteenth century... did not approach it in a spirit of resignation or despair. To the contrary, because they believed God's hands were strong and trustworthy, [they] embraced death, or, better yet, they rose to greet it as if rushing into a loving embrace."

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This podcast will help you get ready to face the inevitable unpleasant things that will happen in your life -- things like trouble, suffering, sickness, and death -- the death of people you love and your own death.

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 9:5: “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”

The featured quote for this episode is from H.P. Lovecraft. He said, "That is not dead which can eternal lie,And with strange aeons even death may die."

Our topic for today is titled "The Individual, the Church, and the Ars Moriendi (the Art of Dying), Part 3" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- Reforming the Art of Dying

In centuries gone by, Christians acknowledged that the dying process is a deeply spiritual event. Today, those who have been able to be present at the death of a loved one often agree, describing it as a spiritual experience. Yet Scripture tells us very little about the life to come or what precisely Jesus meant when he promised to come to take us to himself.

As a result, anxiety is natural and common among Christians. Even though the Bible assures us of our destiny, getting there can be frightening. A hospice patient once told me about his ailments: a bad heart and colon cancer. "And now they've got me in hospice," he said with obvious concern. "So I don't know what's next." He looked at me plaintively, but it was clear we both knew what was next. The thought of his death was visibly worrisome to him. He then asked me to pray for him. "That's the best thing, you know!" he said. A lifelong, active Christian who said he looked forward to being in heaven, this patient was still concerned about the process of dying.

The same was true even for those medieval Christians who learned the “ars moriendi.” Though the deathbed scene, when peaceful, comforted onlookers, it was not always serene. In fact, "horror and fear are the emotions most commonly associated with late medieval perceptions of death and the life everlasting," writes Eamon Duffy in “The Stripping of the Altars,” "and preachers, dramatists, and moralists did not hesitate to employ terror.. to stir their audiences to penitence and good works."

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This podcast will help you get ready to face the inevitable unpleasant things that will happen in your life -- things like trouble, suffering, sickness, and death -- the death of people you love and your own death.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8: "Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

The featured quote for this episode is from Marcus Aurelius. He said, "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

Our topic for today is titled "The Individual, the Church, and the Ars Moriendi (the Art of Dying), Part 2" from the book, "The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come" by Rob Moll.

--- The Christian Art of Dying

Since the beginning of the church Christians have cared for the dying and sought to practice their deaths in ways that express belief in Christ's death and his resurrection. These practices sought to honor the body as the image of God. If God became a human, and even he had to die, Christians recognized that to die is not something to fight against, though it was not a part of God's original design. And if Christ was raised from death, Christians believe that death does not hold any power over the faithful.

Donne was immersed in a culture that prepared even its children to die well, expressing these Christian values and beliefs. Medieval Christians contemplated their own deaths early and often. Disease struck the young and old without warning. "Life, men thought then, was a preparation for death, and it behooved each one to be ready to meet it," writes one of Donne's biographers. "The surest way to meet such a moment was to have been through it often in the mind, to have endured it all in anticipation, and so to be able to meet it with the confidence becoming a Christian who trusted in the saving grace of Christ's sacrifice."

This mental preparation resulted in the ars moriendi; the art of dying. Christians in the second half of the fifteenth century endured their deaths in anticipation of the resurrection with the help of illustrated woodcuts. At that time the plague raged through Europe, and Christians could no longer count on the support of others at the end of their lives. Priests typically cared for the dying, administering the last rites, but during the plague, writes historian Arthur Imhof, "many people died at the same time, and there were not enough priests to assist everyone." These widely circulated woodcuts provided a way to minister to people who were alone.

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