Knocking on Heaven's Door ~ by Katy Butler

Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death ~ by Katy Butler, 2013

Having taught college ethics classes, I ordered this book to read about medical ethics.  Katy Butler's father told his exhausted wife, “I’m living too long,” yet doctors refused to disable his pacemaker, condemning him to a prolonged and agonizing death.  Katy, a journalist, set out to understand why.  The book deals with questions like these:

• When does death stop being a curse and become a blessing?
• Where is the line between saving a life and prolonging a dying?
• When do you say to a doctor, “Let my loved one go?”

This book is a blend of memoir and investigative reporting that lays bare the tangled web of technology, medicine, and commerce that dying has become.  I signed up for the New Year's Resolution Reading Challenge on December 13th, ten days after Jane — one of my closest friends — was told to put her affairs in order because she probably wouldn't see the end of the month.  She didn't, dying on December 29th.  I chose to read this just-arrived book to sort out feelings about death and dying.  Jane's quick death was not like what Katy Butler's father went through:

Katy Butler with her parents, Val and Jeff

"We hadn't created this mess.  My father's drawn-out dying and my mother's suffering [tending him around the clock at home] were the consequence of our culture's idolatrous, one-sided worship of maximum longevity.  As far as I was concerned, this violated the way of the universe and was a moral crime.  Why were we the ones being judged?" (p. 196).

Here's how dying was for another family Butler writes about in the book.  After a daughter insisted on turning off her father's pacemaker, after a doctor agreed to order it, after hospital staff questioned the doctor's orders, and after the hospital bioethics committee ruled it would be "kind and compassionate" to deactivate the pacemaker, this is how one man died (from pages 263-264):

Bella, who was her father's legally appointed medical decision-maker, took him back to her duplex.  A team from the device manufacturer came out and, after some hesitation, deactivated the device.  Bella and her daughter pushed two beds together in the living room, in front of a window overlooking the ocean, and stayed with her father as he grew weaker, sleeping with him throughout the night, their hands entwined with his, heads resting together.  He died peacefully, one week and one hour after the pacemaker was disabled, in her home, in her arms, surrounded with love.  Thanks to his daughter's extraordinary efforts, medical overdoing was undone, and he died the Good Death that our ancestors so prized — in the bosom of family, at home, and in a state of acceptance.  It was an expression of a new Art of Dying for a biotechnical time:  one requiring discernment, resisting Fast Medicine's default never-quit pathway, and honoring death.

The decision was Slow Medicine at its best — a shared decision that took into account the suffering of the whole family and did not focus reflexively on fixing an organ or extending a life.  It empowered the people who carried the burden rather than doctors who would perform a heroic intervention and then leave the family to pick up the pieces.  It accepted the reality of her father's twin terminal illnesses — dementia and heart trouble.  It was not made in isolation by an exhausted daughter but with the support and validation of a larger moral community.  It was the fruit of unusually harmonious cooperation between a family and a medical institution.  It was, in its own way, loving, beautiful, and holy.

This is one possible path to death.

My friend Jane Yelliott's death was like this, backed up by Slow Medicine.  Her doctor said he would recommend to Jane what he had recommended to his own father — palliative care so she wouldn't be in pain.  Jane wanted to die in her own bed, and she did, slipping away peacefully in her sleep.

Jane was an artist who lived fully, right up to the diagnosis of aggressive Stage IV liver cancer at age 87.  When she died, unfinished work was still on her easel.

I rate Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death 9 of 10, excellent.

Interview with the author, October 30, 2013.
New York Times article What Broke My Father’s Heart, June 6, 2010.

NOTE:  This is one of my books for the New Year's Resolution Challenge for 2014.

Two for TWOsday, both recommended by Risé

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying ~ by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, 1992, psychology, 224 pages

In this moving and compassionate classic, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts — of wisdom, faith, and love — that the dying leave for the living to share.  Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter ~ by Sherwin B. Nuland, 1995, psychology, xviii 

+ 278 pages

This National Book Award Winner and national bestseller addresses issues in end-of-life care and includes an afterword that discusses how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones.  Each of us will die in a way that is different from anyone else's death.  Behind each death is a story.  Sherwin B. Nuland (1930-2014) was a surgeon and a teacher of medicine.  In this book, he gave us portraits of the experience of dying that makes clear the choices we can make to allow us our own death.

Risé was working in the Crown Center library, so I went in to speak to her.  While we were talking, Harry came in to get a book, which they must have talked about, since she handed it to him.  It was the first book above (Final Gifts), and while we were talking, I noticed the second book (How We Die) among the nonfiction on the counter.  Risé said she recommends both books, so Harry checked out one and I checked out the other; we agreed to swap books after we finish the ones we had in hand.

** Footnote **

Two related books I've written about in the past on this blog are:

1. The Art of Dying ~ by Katy Butler (posted HERE in 2014)
2. Being Mortal ~ by Atul Gawande (posted HERE in 2019)

Thursday Thoughts about Library Loot

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Commu-nications of the Dying ~ by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, 1992, psychology, 224 pages

In this moving and compassionate classic, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts — of wisdom, faith, and love — that the dying leave for the living to share.  Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project ~ edited by Dave Isay, 2007, stories, 293 pages

Dave Isay selects the most memorable stories from StoryCorps' collection, creating a moving portrait of American life.  The voices here connect us to real people and their lives — to their experiences of profound joy, sadness, courage, and despair, to good times and hard times, to good deeds and misdeeds.  To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or stereotype.  We are our history, individually and collectively, and this book reminds us of this powerful truth.

These are two books I currently have checked out of the library.  I chose them for today's post, even though I previously mentioned them HERE and HERE.  The top book's cover was different online.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library.  Both of these are from the Crown Center's library.

*Speaking of dying, someone shared this story yesterday in the Café (you need to know her mother died decades ago):

 

"I think I died just after midnight.  Mother came for me, but said, 'Not yet,' and I woke up and was back in my bed, alive.  When she came and seemed to be looking for me, I said, 'I'm here on this chair and . . .'  Then I searched for the other word that I needed — ottoman — which was where my feet were resting.  Mother looked at me, said those two words 'Not yet,' and faded away."

Was that a near death experience?  She said she was in bed, but her vision said chair and ottoman.  What's up with that?  Will she die in her chair, maybe soon?

(Note:  Speaking of "a near death experience," on page 173 near the end of the book In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier, I was surprised to read these words from a character in the book who had died briefly and was brought back to life:  "There's nothing out there Baby.  Now you know why I never wanted to tell you what happened.  No matter what the priests or the ministers say, or those people talking about near-death experiences."  I finished reading those last pages of Cormier's book a mere nine days after writing this post.)

**Speaking of StoryCorps, I ran across a 2019 blog post (that never got posted) while putting this one together.  I was among those invited to hear a presentation about our community's Oral History Project and had been pondering some of the questions since then (click the link to see the questions), including this one:

"School:  Are you still friends with anyone from that time in your life?"

We heard details at a meeting, and an old school friend had just sent me a letter with this old B/W photo of the two of us.  (B/W is an abbreviation referring to a photograph in shades of black and white as opposed to a color photograph.)  That's Shirley on the left and me on the right in the 1950s.

Moltmann's newest book

Resurrected to Eternal Life: On Dying and Rising ~ by Jürgen Moltmann, translated by Ellen Yutzy Glebe, 2021, theology

In this deeply personal and daring meditation, eminent theologian Jürgen Moltmann challenges many closely held beliefs about the experience of dying, the nature of death, and the hope of eternal life.  Moving deftly between biblical, theological, and existential domains, Moltmann argues that while we know intimately the experience of dying — both our loved ones' dying and, ultimately, our own — death itself is a mystery.  Are those who have died in fact dead?  If the dead are alive, how or in what respect?  When the dead awaken to eternal life, who wakes?  Moltmann's interrogations yield surprising and beautiful fruits.  The living soul that awakens to eternal life is not a ghost in a machine, but the Lebensgestalt, the shape and story of a life, its human and divine contexts, its "whole."

Drawing on themes from his oeuvre's entire arc, Resurrected to Eternal Life testifies to the inner unity of Moltmann's theology:  the cross, the Spirit, the kingdom, the end, and the hope that makes the end present here and now.  Seasoned readers of Moltmann will find in these pages a capstone of a lifetime of theological exploration, while those new to his thinking will find a concise entry point into his voluminous work.  (This book is an essay, 88 pages long.)

Word of the Day

oeu·vre / ˈəvrə, ˈo͞ovrə / noun = the works of an author regarded collectively.  Example:  "When this book downloads onto my Kindle today — publication day — I'll be only a few volumes short of having Jürgen Moltmann's complete oeuvre."

Let's begin by imagining something

Beginning

Right now:  imagine dying.  Make it what you want.  You could be in your bedroom, on a lonesome hill, or in a beautiful hotel.  Whatever you want.  What is the season?  What time of day is it?  Perhaps you want to lie in sweet summer grass and watch the sun rise over the ocean.  Imagine that.  Perhaps you want to be cuddled in a soft bed, listening to Mozart -- or Beyonce.  Do you want to be alone?  Is there a particular hand you want to hold?  Do you smell the faint scent of baking bread -- or Chanel No. 19?  Close your eyes.  Feel the grass.  The silk sheets.  The skin of the loving hand.  Hear the long-held note.  Dance a little.  Smell the bread.  Imagine that.

Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying ~ by Sallie Tisdale, 2018, planning, 242 pages

Sallie Tisdale offers a perspective on death and dying that is informed by her many years working as a nurse with more than a decade in palliative care.  From the sublime (the faint sound of Mozart as you take your last breath) to the ridiculous (lessons on how to close the sagging jaw of a corpse), she leads us through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm, wise, and humorous hand.  This is more than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible: it is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths she has witnessed, as well as stories from cultures, traditions, and literature around the world, including:

What does it mean to die “a good death”?  Can there be more than one kind of good death?  What can I do to make my death, or the deaths of my loved ones, good?  What to say and not to say, what to ask, and when, from the dying, loved ones, doctors, and more.  What you might expect, physically and emotionally, including the limitations, freedoms, pain, and joy of this unique time.  What happens to a body after death?  What options are available to me after my death, and how do I choose — and make sure my wishes are followed?  In other words, she offers the resources and reassurance that we all need for planning for the end.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Thursday Thoughts ~ walking, walking, walking

What I've been thinking about includes technology (see my word for Wednesday HERE), but also walking.  My iPhone tells me that I'm walking about twice as many steps this year as I did last year.  Yesterday, I came across an article about "the right number of steps to walk" (found HERE).  Yeah, right.  I think that number varies with age and health and a lot of other variables.

My neighbor in the apartment next to mine called me one day to talk about walking and to saunter up and down our hall with me one evening.  She's starting off slowly, which I think is the right way to do it.  We all have our own aches and pains ... and our limits.

Oh, are you waiting for me to give you the "right number" promised above?  Here's one part of that article:  "Results showed that walking 3,867 steps daily was enough to begin reducing the risk of dying from any cause — and that just 2,337 steps per day could help reduce the risk of dying from heart disease.  The benefits were similar for men and women as well..."

The writer went on to say "the study found that essentially the more you walk, the better – every extra 1,000 steps was associated with a 15% decreased risk of dying from any cause, and a mere extra 500 daily steps was associated with a 7% decrease in dying from heart disease."  I have gradually increased my steps per day since last year.  I think I am doing it right for me, an 84-year-old woman.

The Blackwater Lightship ~ by Colm Tóibín

Title, author, date of book, and genre?
The Blackwater Lightship ~ by Colm Tóibín, 1999, fiction

What made you want to read this book?
Strange as it sounds, I wanted to read anything by the man who wrote in the book-lined cave pictured on my writing blog. Before running across a photo of a perfect writer's room, I had never heard of Colm Tóibín.

Summarize the book without giving away the ending.
It is Ireland in the early 1990s. Helen, her mother Lily, and her grandmother Dora come together to tend to Helen's brother, Declan, who is dying of AIDS. On the surface, The Blackwater Lightship is the story of a man dying of AIDS who makes the decision to reveal his homosexuality and his disease to his family and to seek their help.

What did you think of the characters? Did you think problems were believable?
The story is told from the point of view of Helen, sister of the dying Declan. In the opening pages Helen appears to be happily married with two small sons, going through her life's calm routines: tending to her children's nightmares, throwing a dinner party with her husband, taking care of her duties as a schoolteacher and administrator. Then Declan's friend Paul arrives, bringing together a family torn apart by years of resentment and mistrust. Helen bitterly hates both her mother and her grandmother, so much so that she chose not to invite them to her wedding or inform them of the births of her children. The theme of homosexuality, along with the ravages of AIDS, serves as a metaphor for the anger and mistrust that had been destroying the family for years. Helen, her mother, and her mother in turn are cold, distant women, but we begin to see why each is suspicious of the others.

What did you like about the book?
This novel works on two levels: Declan's coming to terms with his fatal illness; and the illumination in brief flashes (like the lighthouse of its title) of Helen and Declan's tortured family ties.

What do you think will be your lasting impression of this book?
The cold, bleak shore of the sea where Declan chooses to spend his last days, there in his grandmother's home ... and the coldness of the family toward each other.

How would you rate this book?
Rated: 8/10, very good book

Beginning ~ with mortality

I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them. ... Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying.  How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point.  The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End ~ by Atul Gawande, 2014

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable.  But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.  Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced.  Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make.  Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.  He shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death, but a good life ― all the way to the very end.

As the author says in the quote shown above, I think well-being is what really matters.  I don't want to spend my dying days in a nursing home in a bed with rails that hold me in or tied into a wheelchair.  All that does is prolong my dying, not help me really live as I want to live.  Quality of life is (or should be) the desired goal.  I borrowed this book from the library three years ago, but I never got it read.  Now it's on my Kindle, and I'm ready to read it.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click this link for other book beginnings.

Beginning ~ with heart failure

-------------------------------------------------------------

It's 3 a.m. here in cardio-thoracic.  All I can 

do for now is doze, and think, and doze again.  

My heart is getting weaker, my body bluer.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

~ by Stephanie Butland, 2018, fiction

This story is about a heart transplant patient who spent the first 28 years of her life dying while she waited to get onto the transplant list and then waiting again for a suitable heart, knowing that someone else has to die in order for her to survive.  When she gets her new, second-hand heart, she then has to learn to live — not live again, but live for the first time.  How does one live a normal life when they’ve never had a normal life?  Ailsa embarks on a journey about what it means to be alive — and to feel alive.

Her father skipped out when he learned that his newborn daughter was dying from a defective heart.  Now her ex-boyfriend is dying from liver failure due to hepatitis and is in need of a transplant to save his life.  Blog posts by Ailsa are interspersed throughout the book.  The author brings out the real issues faced by all sides — donors, recipients, families, friends, life before, and life after.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Judge tenderly of me

Judge Tenderly of Me: The Poems of Emily Dickinson ~ afterword by Winfield Townley Scott, illustrations by Bill Greer, 1968, poems, 8/10

I've come across some long-lost things while unpacking boxes at my newest address.  This book is one of them.  Having loved some of Emily Dickinson's poems that I had to memorize as a child, I bought this book shortly after it was published.  The dust jacket was marking one of my favorites:

I'm Nobody!  Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise — you know!

How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog —
To tell one's name — the livelong June —
To an admiring Bog!

Oh, dear!  My memory must be going.  I've been mis-quoting it for years, saying "the livelong day" — but where did "June" come from?  I'd forgottten, if I'd ever noticed, how much Emily Dickinson used the — um — dash.  When I looked up my NEW favorite from this book, someone had replaced all the dashes with appropriate punctuation, according to English teachers.  Here's what's in this book:

I've seen a Dying Eye
Run round and round a Room —
Then Cloudier become —
And then — obscure with Fog — 
And then — be soldered down
Without disclosing what it be
'Twere blessed to have seen — 

I've thought of things like the last words a dying person speaks or, maybe, the last thing a person ever saw.  But Emily Dickinson wondered what it was that "dying eye" was looking for.  I wonder what I would want to see before I died.  Probably the faces of those I love.

Emily Dickinson lived December 10, 1830 to May 15, 1886.  This photo was taken around 1850.  How do I rate her work at this stage of my life?  Very good, or 8/10.

A chatfest and a mystery series

Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View ~ by Ramin Setoodeh, 2019, nonfiction, 336 pages

When Barbara Walters launched The View, network executives told her that hosting it would tarnish her reputation.  Instead, within ten years, she had revolutionized morning TV and made household names of her co-hosts:  Joy Behar, Star Jones, Meredith Vieira, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.  But the daily chatfest* didn’t just comment on the news; it became the news.

Based on unprecedented access, including interviews with nearly every host, journalist Ramin Setoodeh takes you backstage where the stars really spoke their minds.  Here's the full story of how Star, then Rosie, then Whoopi tried to take over the show, while Barbara struggled to maintain control of it all, a modern-day Lear with her media-savvy daughters.  Read about how so many co-hosts had a tough time fitting in, suffered humiliations at the table, then pushed themselves away, feeling betrayed ― with one nearly quitting during a commercial.  The director, meanwhile, was being driven insane, especially by Rosie.

Setoodeh uncovers the truth about Star’s weight loss and wedding madness, Rosie’s feud with Trump, Whoopi’s toxic relationship with Rosie, Barbara’s difficulty stepping away.  Plus, all the unseen hugs, snubs, and tears.  This book shows why The View can be mimicked and mocked, but it can never be matched.

This is one of Donna's hardback books that her sister let me have.  It has eight pages of color photos in the middle, like this one of Michelle Obama fist bumping Elizabeth when she was a guest co-host on June 18, 2008.  I'm about to read it, so I don't know details yet.  However, it seems telling to me that these are the three sections between prologue and epilogue:

• Prologue:  Out, Damned Cohost
• Part One:  Barbara's View
• Part Two:  Rosie's View
• Part Three:  Whoopi's View
• Epilogue:  Trump's View

Word of the Day*

Chatfest is short for "chatting festival," where two or more people engage in constant conversation for a long period of time.

The Jennifer Marsh Mysteries

Dying to Remember #4 ~ by Jennifer Fitzwater, 2000, mystery, 272 pages

Twelve years ago Jimmy Mitchell disappeared the night of Jennifer Marsh’s prom, and now her good friend Leigh Ann is desperate for Jennifer to accompany her to their high school reunion.  Nothing could make her go back to confront Sheena Cassidy, the backbiting, mean-spirited, boyfriend-stealing junior squad cheerleader who made her life a living hell — nothing except a note from Sheena’s now husband Danny Buckner, Jennifer’s first love and prom date, who is pleading for her help with something that happened on that horrendous prom night. But when she gets to the reunion, Danny barely has a chance to speak with Jennifer before he’s drawn away by one of his in-crowd. Less than an hour later Danny’s dead in the parking lot, an apparent suicide. And Gavin Lawless, budding singer/song writer and the love of Leigh Ann’s life, has returned to dredge up exactly what happened to Jimmy Mitchell that dreadful night twelve years ago that left Gavin with repressed memories and war hero Ben Underwood under a cloud of suspicion in Jimmy’s disappearance.

Dying to Be Murdered #5 ~ by Jennifer Fitzwater, 2011, mystery, 199 pages

Mary Ashton is convinced someone is going to murder her, and that there’s nothing she can do to stop it. But what she can do is hire unpublished mystery writer Jennifer Marsh to record her final days, so her killer won’t get away with it. Mary may seem a little loony, but she’s one of Macon’s leading socialites, or at least she was until the competency hearing. AND she’s offering Jennifer $1,000 a week to stay in her home, the historic Ashton mansion, reputed to be haunted by a Civil War heroine. The money’s too good to turn down, especially for a starving writer, so Jennifer agrees. And what’s the harm? Why would anyone want Mary Ashton dead? But the first night at the mansion, Jennifer’s awakened by blood curdling screams coming from Mary’s room, which is directly beneath her own. Trapped in her room, Jennifer is helpless. When she finally escapes, she finds a blood-soaked bed straight out of a horror movie but no sign of Mary’s body. Old family secrets and grudges, mysterious deaths, and ghostly lights that move about the mansion lead to a mystery fraught with danger and intrigue.

Dying to Get Her Man #6 ~ by Jennifer Fitzwater, 2012, mystery (Georgia), 332 pages

On the coldest day in Macon, Georgia’s recent history, Suzanne Gray dressed herself in white, tied a blue ribbon in her hair, gathered a bouquet of white roses, typed a suicide note, lay herself down on her lover’s grave, and froze to death.  Or did she?  Suzanne's niece doesn't think so.

Neither does mystery writer Jennifer Marsh.  Not only was the note not signed, but, well, honestly the whole thing sounds fishy to Jennifer and she can't let it go.  Sam Culpepper, the reporter on the case and Jennifer's boyfriend, not only appears to be hiding some of the details from Jennifer, but seems more interested in taking their relationship to the next level than discussing work.  So why, then, does an engagement announcement for Sam and his ex-girlfriend appear in the paper the next day?

Did Suzanne commit suicide or was she murdered?  Did Suzanne’s lover really die from a slip on the stairs?  Does Sam have another relationship that Jennifer knew nothing about?  What will it take to solve these mysteries?  When the bullets start to fly, Jennifer knows that she’d better figure out what's happening, or she'll be paying with more than her heart ... she'll be paying with her life.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts the Sunday Salon.

The Last Week ~ by Borg and Crossan

The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem ~ by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, 2006, religion, 9/10

No matter how many times I study a passage of scripture, I can always find something more in it.  If I look at it from a different angle, the light falls on something I didn't notice the last time.  If I approach it while dealing with something in my life or in the lives of people in my congregation, I see something new.  It happened again this month, as I took another look at the gospel of Mark, along with Borg and Crossan.  A few days ago, a discussion among preachers touched on themes in this book.  I loved the thinking in this exchange:

One said,

"Palm Sunday is April Fool's day this year.  Any thoughts on linking the two?  (Personally I'd love it if the full moon was a week earlier and Easter Sunday was April 1.)"

The other responded,

"I've been thinking along the same lines.  The Last Week by Borg and Crossan talks about the entrance of two different parades ... that might be a way into the connection."

Borg and Crossan discovered that many Christians are not clear about the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion, so they present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life, with eight chapters for the eight days.  (Notice that this would fit nicely into a Lenten Bible study.)  They begin by differentiating between what we call "Passion Week" (a time of suffering) and what Jesus was passionate about — the kingdom of God.  Let's take a look the first two days.

PALM SUNDAY

On Palm Sunday, as Elaine mentioned, there were two entries into Jerusalem.  The triumphal entry of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, riding on a horse and leading his soldiers into the city, symbolized the military strength of the empire.  The other entry was a peasant procession that Borg and Crossan suggest "looks like a planned political demonstration" (p. 4).  Pilate represented a domination system of political oppression, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation.  And Jewish leaders were on his side.

"What was new was that the temple was now at the center of local collaboration with Rome" (p.15).

The temple authorities raised tribute for Rome with an annual "temple tax."  They were supporting imperial violence and injustice.  And here we have a chance to mention April Fool's Day, as the first preacher above wants to do.  Jesus, riding his little donkey, was making fun of Pilate.  Making a fool of him.  Making an important point about the kingdom of God, that it was nonviolent.

And that leads us to Monday.  Remember the story about the money-changers in the temple?  Actually, they were in the courtyard of the temple.  Jesus took a look around the place on Sunday evening (according to Mark) and saved his second "demonstration" until morning.  But notice he did check it out.  He was preparing for the next day, just as he had lined up the donkey ahead of time.

MONDAY

Overturning the tables was planned, just as Jesus planned his entry into Jerusalem.  These were two demonstrations against the system.  Sunday, the anti-imperial entry into Jerusalem, and Monday, the symbolic destruction of the temple.

"What is involved for Jesus is an absolute criticism not only of violent domination, but of any religious collaboration with it" (p. 53).

"There was a terrible ambiguity in that the priest who represented the Jews before God on the Day of Atonement also represented them before Rome the rest of the year" (p. 41).

Borg and Crossan give compelling details that show how Mark carefully painted a picture of Jesus demonstrating against violence and injustice.  In the preface, they show how the word passion has come to mean the suffering of Jesus during Holy Week.  Yet the passion of Jesus, what he was passionate about, was the kingdom of God.

"The first passion of Jesus was the kingdom of God, namely, to incarnate the justice of God by demanding for all a fair share of a world belonging to and ruled by the covenantal God of Israel.  It was that first passion for God's distributive justice that led inevitably to the second passion by Pilate's punitive justice" (p. viii).

FRAMES

The authors point out how Mark used "frames" around scenes to make his points.  It was fascinating to me to see the stories of healing the blind before and after the disciples had totally misunderstood Jesus.  In other words, they were blind.  After reading this book, I can see that Mark was a much more sophisticated and nuanced writer than I had realized.  The careful placement of stories about blind men being healed, immediately before and after a story about the disciples' incomprehension, serves to emphasize that part of the story.  The point is made with the frames:  the Twelve just don't get it.  They can't see, and thus miss the point of what Jesus is trying to teach them.  This is a major point in the book:

"Notice, above all, how repeatedly Mark has Jesus insist that Peter, James, and John, the Twelve, and all his followers on the way from Caesarea Philippi to Jeusalem must pass with him through death to a resurrected life whose content and style was spelled out relentlessly against their refusals to accept it.  For Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus" (p. 102).

That understanding is from the Wednesday chapter, but it is made even more explicit in the Friday chapter:

"Was Jesus guilty of advocating violent revolution against the empire and its local collaborators?  No. ... was Jesus guilty of nonviolent resistance to imperial Roman oppression and local Jewish collaboration?  Oh, yes.  Mark's story of Jesus's final week is a sequence of public demonstrations against and confrontations with the domination system.  And, as all know, it killed him" (p. 163).

Another quote, this time from the Easter Sunday chapter, points out how these authors understand the point Mark and the other gospel writers wanted to make:

"Good Friday and Easter, death and resurrection together, are a central image in the New Testament for the path to a transformed self.  The path involves dying to an old way of being and being reborn into a new way of being.  Good Friday and Easter are about this path, the path of dying and rising, of being born again" (p. 210).

And finally, using the gospel of John, the authors give their understanding of the claim that Jesus is the "only way."

"The Jesus of John's gospel speaks explicitly about being 'born again' (3:1-10).  In another passage, he says that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it cannot bear fruit (12:24).  He speaks of this way as 'the only way' (14:6) in a verse that has unfortunately often become a triumphalist claim justifying Christian exclusivism.  But within John's incarnational theology, the death and resurrection of Jesus incarnates the way of transformation.  This is what it means to say, 'Jesus is the only way.'  The path we see in him — dying and rising — is the path of personal transformation" (p. 211).

This review may seem to have little focus, hitting various points as it does.  But taken all together, the points Borg and Crossan make show what Mark was attempting to do in his narrative.  It may be a new way of seeing the story for you, not what you were expecting.  That's happened to Matthew and Luke, who used Mark's gospel as a basis for what they wrote, according to most scholars.  Borg and Crossan show where Matthew and Luke changed a thing or two, here and there, while writing their gospels, not aware of what Mark had been doing, like with his framing technique. (In the Monday chapter, page 33 has a chart of half a dozen stories Mark "framed" to make his point.)

I highly recommend this book and rate it 9 of 10, an excellent book.  I also reviewed it for RevGalBookPals today.

Sunday Salon ~ it's about time

Before I forget it, all you folks in the United States were supposed to turn back your clocks this morning.  Did you do it?  If not, you have an additional hour to get wherever you were planning to go.

BOOK on ORDER

Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death ~ by Katy Butler, 2013, memoir

Katy Butler's parents wanted “Good Deaths,” but forces within medicine stood in the way.  Butler was living thousands of miles from her vigorous and self-reliant parents when the call came:  a crippling stroke had left her proud seventy-nine-year-old father unable to fasten a belt or complete a sentence.  Tragedy at first drew the family closer:  her mother devoted herself to caregiving, and Butler joined the twenty-four million Americans helping shepherd parents through their final declines.  Then doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker, keeping his heart going but doing nothing to prevent his six-year slide into dementia, near-blindness, and misery.  When he told his exhausted wife, “I’m living too long,” mother and daughter were forced to confront a series of wrenching moral questions.

• When does death stop being a curse and become a blessing?
• Where is the line between saving a life and prolonging a dying?
• When do you say to a doctor, “Let my loved one go?”

When doctors refused to disable the pacemaker, condemning her father to a prolonged and agonizing death, Butler set out to understand why.  Her quest had barely begun when her mother took another path.  Faced with her own grave illness, she rebelled against her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and met death head-on.  With a reporter’s skill and a daughter’s love, Butler explores what happens when our terror of death collides with the technological imperatives of medicine.  Her provocative thesis is that modern medicine, in its pursuit of maximum longevity, often creates more suffering than it prevents.   This revolutionary blend of memoir and investigative reporting lays bare the tangled web of technology, medicine, and commerce that dying has become.  And it chronicles the rise of Slow Medicine, a new movement trying to reclaim the “Good Deaths” our ancestors prized.  This book is a map through the labyrinth of a broken medical system.  It will inspire the difficult conversations we need to have with loved ones as it illuminates the path to a better way of death.

GREAT-GRANDKIDS

Princess Raegan at the ice show is quite a change of character from last week's funny face with Cheetos.  She's four and a half.

I like the roses decorating her sleeves.  She attended Disney on Ice: Princesses and Heroes last Sunday, October 27th, with her parents and both sets of grandparents.

Meanwhile, Jaxon went to the beach last month with his parents.  He'll turn three in December.

And here's Jaxon as Mr. Peanut for Halloween.  Raegan and Jaxon are my two great-grandchildren, and Jaxon will soon have a baby sister.

The Sunday Salon's Facebook page links to other blogs.

Thoughts collected for Thursday

1.  Palliative Care vs. Hospice Care = I attended an online workshop on Tuesday about caring for the elderly.  One section was on how to help people with Alzheimer's and their caregivers.  The palliative care info came near the end of the day.  If you are interested, ask me about it.

2.  Alzheimer's Facts = Get information for free from the Alzheimer's Association.

3.  Idiom of the Day

"Coloring outside the lines" is an idiom that means not following the rules, thinking creatively.  It invokes an image of a child who does not fill in the pictures in a coloring book in a conventional manner.  I ran across it in a book I was reading, so I looked it up to share here.

4.  How big is this number? = A million, a billion, a trillion — hey, that's a whole lot.

• 1 million seconds is about 11 days.
• 1 billion seconds is about 31.5 years.
• 1 trillion seconds is over 31,709 years.

5.  Word of the Day = tril·lion /ˈtrilyən / number = a million million (1,000,000,000,000 or 10¹²).  INFORMAL = a very large number or amount.  Example:  "Humans consist of trillions of cells." 

6.  Book I'm reading 

Peace ~ by Tucker Shaw, 2002, young adult, 144 pages

    Discusses past and present peace leaders and movements alongside quotes about peace from around the world, with a focus on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  Is it possible to live a peaceful life in a non-peaceful world?  This is a thought-provoking view into how we think about peace in today's world.

7.  Another delay = Because of more construction delays, I won't be moving into my new apartment in our new building in February, as we'd been told.  That gives me more time to sort my stuff.  

8.  Death and dying = Pope Benedict died recently at 95, and a nun named Sister André died Tuesday in Toulon, France.  She was the world’s oldest documented living human, having lived 118 years and 340 days.

9.  Sister André = I learned that about Sister André from Jan (who writes things).  Jan wrote:  "I would appreciate not living until I’m 118."  I'm almost 83 and not planning to die soon, but 118 seems awfully long to live.  According to the New York Times, when Sister André had Covid a year or so ago, she said, "I’m not afraid of dying."  Neither am I, but — like Jan — I also would appreciate not living until I’m 118 years old.

10.  Lucile Randon = Born on Feb. 11, 1904, Lucile Randon worked as a teacher, a governess, and a child care provider before becoming a Catholic nun in 1944.  After she became a nun, she took the name "Sister André."

Beginning ~ with dying to the world

The beginning is a bit long, so read only the first sentence, if you prefer.  It took this much for me to decide I would actually read the book.

That glorious day when my classmates and I received Holy Orderes was the beginning of my servitude in the rectory of Monsignor McQuade and his sister, Elizabeth.  If somebody's Uncle Louie hadn't been flooding the cathedral sanctuary with the lights of his home movie camera, the ordination ceremony would have been something right out of the Middle Ages.  Bishop McGivney sat on a throne before the high altar and watrched us process up the aisle carrying lighted candles.  When we were all standing in front of the main altar, Monsignor McFee, the cathedral rector, gave us the call to orders.
"Theodorus Patricius Kelly."
"Ad sum."
"Angelo Thomas Procella."
"Ad sum."
"Robertus Paulus Regalo."
"Ad sum — Here I am," I answered and blew out my candle, symbolic of my dying to the world.
When the rest of my classmates had received the call and answered, the Bishop turned to the seminary rector, who was standing on the sidelines, and said to him in Latin, "Monsignor?  Do you know them to be worthy?"
The rector read off a long Latin paragraph which stated that as far as human knowledge would allow him to know, we were worthy.
We had made it.  Six years of chasing bells and studying had put us on the top of the world.  With over a thousand proud relatives staring at us from the pews, we were high and happy.

A Fragile Bark ~ by Joseph P. Benante, 1971, fiction

Summary:  For Father Robert Regalo, the first church assignment after ordination is not at all what the idealistic young priest could have expected.  Father Robert is one of the new breed of church fathers:  hip, skeptical, and concerned more with the everyday reaalities of the human condition than with the rituals of the formal church.  Yet he finds himself in the middle of an ecclesiastic Catch-22, struggling to keep his sanity while coping with the rules and regulations of the rectory, the bingo games, and the raffles.  The book reveals the serious problems and irrelevancies of serious problems and irrelevancies of organized religion today.

It's off to a slow start, and this may not sound the least bit interesting to most of you, but — having bought this book in 1987 just before my own graduation from seminary, just before I was appointed to my own first church — I was curious about the experiences of a newly minted Catholic father.  The book was written over 40 years ago, long before the Catholic Church's pedophile priests were exposed.  I'll also read this with the upcoming retirement of Pope Benedict XVI in mind.  This book has moved with me from place to place for over a quarter of a century, still unread even after I retired from ministry.  I think it's about time I either read it or gave it away.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays. Click here for today's Mister Linky.

New Year's Resolution Reading Challenge 2014

Joy Weese Moll @ Joy's Book Blog has a new reading challenge.

THE RULES

What do you want to accomplish in the New Year?  Will reading a book help you reach your goal, keep your resolution, or complete your project?  The New Year’s Resolution Reading Challenge starts now and goes through the end of January.  Start the year off right by reading books that support your goals, resolutions, and projects.

Whether you want to write a novel, start a new career, or be happier, there are books to aid you in your quest.  The New Year’s Resolution Reading Challenge is to read one to four books that will stimulate action on your goals.  Here are the levels:

Resolved:  1 book
Determined:  2 books
Committed:  3 books
Passionate:  4 books

The books can all support the same resolution — you could read four books on getting organized, for example.  Or, read four books to help with four different projects — one book on moving to a foreign country, one book on health and fitness, one book on small business, and one book on knitting (on your way to becoming a healthy expat entrepreneur with great scarves). Stay tuned for information on upcoming Twitter chats and our New Year Read-Along book. This link is for sign-ups only.  Each Wednesday through January, there will be a link list for posts about your New Year Reading and your book reviews.

MY GOALS

This year, I'm working on several things, so I have lots of books that would fit this challenge.  Between now and the end of January, there are exactly seven weeks.  So my goal is to go beyond resolved, determined, committed, and passionate, all the way to "ridiculously addicted."  I want to read five to seven books, seven being — of course — the number I hope to achieve.  Here are my book choices (which may change) and the resolution each supports.  When I finish a book, I'll come back here and link the title to my review on this blog.

Resolved:  1st book (Dec. 14-20)

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth ~ by Reza Aslan, 2013, biography.

Why?  Because I'll be teaching a class that's studying this book, I need to read it.  This is probably the book I'll start with.

Determined:  2nd book (Dec. 21-27)

Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death ~ by Katy Butler, 2013, memoir, 9/10

Why?  One of my dearest friends is dying.  She is not expected to live to the end of this month.  I'm reading this one for me, as I sort out feelings about death and dying.

Committed:  3rd book (Dec. 28-Jan. 3)

Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions ~ by Rachel Held Evans, 2010, memoir, 9/10

Why?  I'm hosting an online book club at Book Buddies, and this is the book we are currently discussing.

Passionate:  4th book (Jan. 4-10)

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers ~ by Anne Lamott, 2012, religion.

Why?  I'm writing a book on prayer, and I want to see what Anne Lamott considers the three essential prayers.

Ardent:  5th book (Jan. 11-17)

Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary ~ by Frederick Buechner, 1993, religion, 8/10

Why?  I have a word blog, and this is a different kind of dictionary.  I expect to find words that are interesting enough to write about.  One word I noticed is "funeral," which is on my mind right now (see 2nd book).

Fervent:  6th book (Jan. 18-24)

America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines ~ by Gail Collins, 2003, history.

Why?  I'm also writing a book about Women Unbound, and this book covers 400 years in America.

Ridiculously addicted:  7th book  (Jan. 25-31)

Embracing the Human Jesus: A Wisdom Path for Contemporary Christianity ~ by David Galston, 2012, religion.

Why?  This is the book my face-to-face group will be studying next.  There are so few of us that each of us must read and take notes to keep our discussion going.