DEATH

As far as I know, the birth to death ratio is 1:1. That is, everyone who is born is going to eventually die. Our current health care system tries to keep people from getting dead - but it hasn't stopped. Everyday, people die and everyday more people are being born. That's the way it is!

Our evolution into space may change our longevity statistics, but the birth to death ratio of 1:1 will probably continue for quite a while. Now if eventually everyone is going to die and it's a part of life, it seems as we must make friends with the concept.

Just as we embrace the unknown in our sense of religion and spirit... so death must also engage us in our sense of wonder and bring us peace. "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed". We have over taxed our health care system by demanding that doctors keep us from being dead.

Our current medical technology is great for setting broken bones - stitching wounds - giving hearts a second chance (sometimes a third and fourth), artistry and restoration of physical features - plastic - and reconstructive surgery.

We have yet to cure the common cold or eradicate cancer and disease. We have a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals for mind altering, hormone-regulating, muscle-relaxing, mood-elevating, anti-nauseating, irregular heart beatings, antibiotics, electricity, radiation and nuclear imaging and treating to name a few.

But it hasn't kept us from getting dead.

It can lessen the hurt - it can mask the pain.

It can speed up your heart beat - it can put you to sleep.

But we haven't found the pill as yet that keeps one from getting

DEAD.

So our hospitals are full of the elderly on life support machinery with medication and intravenous tubes.... trying to keep them from getting dead - and we are failing.

Let us comfort and console and caress those who know that they are to die, rather than try to live a lie by pretending it's not going to happen. Let us be present as family and community and tend to those who depart from this place. Let us do it with dignity and compassion, wonder and grace - holiness. Spirit is eternal.

 Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes forms.

Remember: This is science not philosophy.

"Thus the Seer,

With vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear,

In the perpetual round of strange,

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth,

Prom earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things, unseen before,

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel

Turning forevermore

In the rapid and rushing river of Time."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home..."

William Wordsworth

If someone is in the last stages of inoperable brain cancer and is in severe pain without the intervention of medication, that person should have the personal right to leave his physical body with appropriate medication and die. I am not encouraging suicide by any means - I only wish to place death into the realm of the holy and mysterious and assign it its rightful place in the grand scheme of creation.

We have so much fear around death. Let us nurture and celebrate life, and when it is time to die - let us see with the inner eye - the spiritual surprise - an eternal sunrise - onto forever.

"When death comes and whispers to me ... Thy days have ended. I will say to him, I have lived in love and not in mere time. He will ask: Will thy songs remain? I will say I do not know, but this I know - that often when I sang I found my eternity."

TAGORE

Everyday 10 million stars in our universe "die". And new stars are born ... we are stardust.

"When spirit and energy are acknowledged as eternal, then death need not be viewed as fearful."

Principles of Attitudinal Healing

Alter our beliefs about dying and we can alter our destiny.

If we sense a continuity of spirit and energy, then we can feel free to act more creatively and consciously, and our choices for this adventure we call life will reflect that spiritual vision.

The fear of death keeps one from being fully alive.

False

Evidence

Appearing

Real

The first three letters in funeral spell FUN!

From dust to dust we shall return.

We are stardust... we are in the garden.