Dying well Archives - Bob on Books

Cover image of "Insane for the Light" by Ronald Rolheiser

Insane for t h e Light, Ronald Rolheiser. Image (ISBN: 9780593736463) 2025.

Summary: The spiritual journey of our final years, learning not only how to relinquish one’s life but to give away one’s death.

On Saturday, I learned of the passing of an actor whose movies I watched as a young adult. She was eight years older than I am. This is not an uncommon experience when I read of the deaths of famous people, or the obituary page from my high school on Facebook. It reminds me that part of the business of this stage of my life is to live with intention and attention toward my death. How does God want to continue to form me in the way of Christ as my bodily and mental powers wane? And how may I live so that my life, and even my death, may be a gift to those I love?

There are not many guides for this journey. Many of the books about spirituality address our productive years and the transitions of midlife. But what about the years of autumn and winter? In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate the writing of Ronald Rolheiser in his books The Holy Longing and Sacred Fire. I discovered that this new book, Insane for the Light completes this trilogy. In the first, Rolheiser writes about our search for meaning. Then in the second, he speaks to how we give our lives away. Now, in an interesting turn of phrase, he writes about how we give our deaths away. Rolheiser observes:

“Giving our deaths away as a gift to our loved ones means that at some point in our lives, we need to stop focusing on our agenda and begin to focus on our obituary, on what kind of spirit we will leave behind.”

But what does that look like?

Rolheiser begins with anthropologies from aging, considering voices as diverse as Hindu mythology’s sannyasin to Germain Greer’s crone, Richard Rohr’s angry or holy old fools, and David Brooks’ call to scale the second mountain of meaning and love. Then he considers the challenge of transformation in aging. Instead of becoming the same person, only more so, he addresses seven transformations, all summarized in Jesus call to metanoia, the change of mind into creatures more like God. More like Christ. In the end, the image of Christ defenseless on the cross, submitting to death and giving his life, is our model. In our death, how we deal with helplessness, the loss of control are crucial. It is the experience of passivity. We may embrace or bitterly fight this, but if embraced, following Jesus in death is lifegiving to others.

But this journey is sometimes a journey through dark nights. Rolheiser draws upon the wisdom of St. john of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul. He offers wise counsel for how we live through such nights (pp. 80-82) that is worth the price of the book. He proposes that the purpose of the “dark night” is so that “God can flow into our lives and into this world purely, uncontaminated by human projection and self interest, because in our frustrating darkness we are helpless to control the experience.”

Then Rolheiser turns to the image of the “beggars hut.” In fact, that hut is the aging process. a kind of monastic existence with its own order of tasks. Carrying tension for the young. Offering prophecy to the world. Radiating God’s compassion. Rescuing God from narrowness. Blessing the young. Giving up on fear. Preparing for our move to a place beyond the illusion of self sufficiency. Making peace with those in our circle through the words “Please forgive me,” “I forgive you,” “Thank you,” and “I love you.” Rolheiser synthesizes Henri Nouwen’s ideas of how we give our deaths away into twelve invitations.

In his final chapters Rolheiser addresses his thoughts about the afterlife, including our communion with those who have died. Finally, he outlines St. John of the Cross’s paradigm of spiritual transformation. He includes examples of transformation through prayer and through service. His parting word comes from St. John’s advice:

“We all have made vows: to one another, to God, and to ourselves. John of the Cross simply advises that we stay within these vows and accept the times of disillusionment–and then love, others, maturity, and God will find us,”

It seems to me that the book’s central idea is that our aging is an invitation to die with Christ. What I find most attractive in this is that it suggests that old people can grow! We can be transformed by God through the aging process. We can mellow, become grateful, forgiving, hopeful, and childlike. Then we generously give away the remainder of our lives–and our deaths. And in our dying, we become “insane for the light” of God’s glory. I recall reading of my childhood pastor’s final words: “The glory, the glory!” To read these words was a gift, as is remembering them. He gave his death away to others.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The Lost Art of Dying, L. S. Dugdale. New York: Harper One, 2020.

Summary: A physician challenges our over-medicalized treatment of the dying, advocating a recovery of the “art of dying,” which also makes it possible to live well.

He died three times in one night. Mr. Turner was an elderly man dying of metastatic cancer that had invaded much of his body. But the family insisted everything be done to keep him alive. So when he “coded,” much of the hospital mobilized to resuscitate him. Chest compressions broke frail ribs. Breathing tubes were inserted. Injections of powerful drugs were injected to restart the heart. This happened twice more that night. The final time, the team worked twenty minutes to no avail. Mr. Turner was pronounced dead. The author, one of the physicians on this team asks whether this is a good way to die.

This incident, during her residency, began a process of questioning about what it meant to die well, leading to her discovery of the Ars Moriendi, The Art of Dying, a fourteenth century handbook arising out of the plagues, when anyone might expect to die an early death. Dying well begins with recognizing one’s finitude, reckoning on and appropriately planning for one’s death. Dying well happens best in community, where the dying acknowledges wrongs and seeks forgiveness, where love is expressed, and where bystanders rehearse their own death. Dugdale also talks about how context matters, and the preference where appropriate care can be given, for death at home, and in the hospital, only when that affords the best care.

Often our inability to die well, and the actions that hinder dying well reflect our fear of death. She confronts the real terror, even for the religious, of the unknown void of death. Dugdale’s counsel is that each of us has to wrestle with what it means to die into life. In an extended reflection on the Isenheim Altarpiece, she considers what happens to the body in disease and death–its corruption into dust. She describes the reality summarized in one terrified patient’s words–“I don’t know what I believe”–and the vital work of facing the existential questions of meaning to both live and die well.

Her final chapters describe the rituals that follow death, and the wisdom in the Jewish tradition around grief. She concludes with some recommendations that might form a modern Art of Dying. Think twice about hospitalization. Discern when further treatment is futile. Live well at the end through good, and early, palliative care when death is imminent. Reconsider resuscitation. Start giving away your stuff. Live with purpose. Die in community.

The book concludes with a series of ink drawings by Michael W. Dugger, similar to the woodcuts in the original Ars Moriendi around the themes of each chapter of the book. They are a fitting way to invite us to reflect once more on this book’s message: we desperately need to recover the art of dying well. It isn’t to be found in the over-medicalized, hospital-centric practices of our modern way of death. Nor is it to be found in the denial of our finitude, our efforts to suppress our fears.

This book gives much to think about in our current pandemic, including the terrible tragedy of how it results in lonely deaths. A blessing upon the caregivers who treat the dying with dignity and compassion! It also makes me wonder if our inability to pursue for an extended time the disciplines that guard our health and that of our neighbors reflects the fact that we haven’t done the work of preparing to die well. We act as if we are invulnerable. We risk our lives for a night of clubbing. To not adequately reckon with death is to not adequately treasure the gift of the life we have, the community with whom we share it, and betrays the thinness of our efforts to consider the existential questions of life. All this suggests that this book could not have come at a better time.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.