By Covenant Health Systems on
1/30/2012 3:05 PM
Many of us have provided care for the dying in our personal lives, as well as in our professional capacities. It is rare that dying patients, many times when out of the earshot of family members whose feelings they protect until their end, do not begin to sound out their questions, their doubts, their assessments and their summaries, about the lives they have lived, their thoughts about what lies ahead (for some still uncertain, 'if anything'), their successes and failures. Rarely are those discussions centered about professional accomplishments, but almost always the assessments and summaries are part and parcel of the more transcendent focus: of what this (temporal life) means, and what that (afterlife, immortality, heaven) is all about. Is that not the "stuff" of a religious discussion, of religious experience, if perhaps not always a matter of denominational theology? Is not the heart of religious experience all about relationship(s): with those whom God has placed in our lives: family, friends, colleagues...