What a model he is.Īnd while we’re dealing with all this and more, our shattered, polarized politics has pummeled us in incalculable ways, even as death sometimes has forced a personal reckoning about the nature and purpose of life, raising ancient questions about evil, suffering, God. This may sound crazy or impossible coming from a dying man, but it’s true.” Then he listed many reasons.
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Recently on Facebook he posted a list of books he’s read “in researching how to prepare for my own death.” At the end of 2021, he wrote: “I’m happy. Cancer, for instance, has almost killed a childhood friend of mine - a man of much grace. Many of us also know people dying from something besides COVID, but their struggle seems more poignant now. There’s been blood everywhere - here, at our nation’s Capitol, in Afghanistan, on and on. Kansas City recorded 179 homicides in 2020 and 157 in 2021, while 2022 also has started out murderous. Names of the dead now are chanted against racism, police brutality, inhumanity: George Floyd, Duante Wright, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Cameron Lamb, so many more. (Bill Tammeus | Flatland)Īdd to that the death in public places. But there was no way I could steer him clear of the barrage of news images of the COVID-19 body count, the corpses piling up outside hospitals, the suffering of children losing parents and the anguish of parents losing children …”įorest Hill Calvary Cemetery in Kansas City. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington: “I did not want to further darken his mood. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) wrote about exactly that in his new book, “ Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy,” in which he describes the suicide of his son, who was buried the day before the Jan. When worse happens anyway, it sometimes means suicide. Teenagers at summer camps, in scouting and in other group activities - strained by forces they have little capacity to understand or control - have acted out in distressing ways, requiring counselors to use techniques they hope don’t make things worse. Students often have been out of school, learning instead (sort of) virtually and falling behind as they fear that dreams of a gleaming future have died aborning.
I know pastors who pray for strength to manage just one more day. Health care workers, clergy, first responders, funeral directors, teachers and others have been sucked into death’s intense vortex, some of them permanently damaged by the collapse of their mental or physical health or both. People have died in nursing homes while family members, barred from the room, have stood outside watching helplessly through a window.įunerals, which might have comforted the grieving, have been postponed, then postponed again.
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It’s driven me and many others to our knees, in both despondency and prayer.ĭeath - through COVID-19 and such spinoff calamities as mental health breakdowns and economic disasters, plus violence in our streets and now slaughter in Ukraine - often has stolen our confidence, our hope. Sponsor Message Become a Flatland sponsorĭeath, which many Americans seem to think is optional, has been my close companion for two years.
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