Love Letter to my Life #65: How do you want to die?

Assuming you had a choice, of course

“People who walk toward their mortality

without moral support die poorly.”

— L.S. Dugdal

Where am I headed?

I knew a woman who got up in the middle of the night, went to the living room, sat in a comfortable chair and died. It seemed so simple, however I still don’t know what to think about it. I didn’t know her well enough to hear the details, however I can imagine some part of her knowing and dressing for the occasion. Not wanting to disturb her partner’s sleep. Straightening the kitchen for the last time. Looking at photos of her life. Remembering the good times. Watching morning light gather outside her windows. Feeling the peace of knowing her time here was done.

Over the years since then, I’ve wondered how I would want to die.

The thought of just going to sleep and not waking up has always seemed like the way I would like to go … until now when it actually might happen that way. Now, I’m leaning toward having a diagnosis with an actual time line (preferably one with little pain) so I could get my affairs in order.

Of course, the logical thing would be to get my affairs in order now since the inevitable is like a ship on the horizon … I can see it in the distance but not exactly sure how fast it’s traveling toward port. What I would really like to have time for are last conversations with the people I love and any others who might want to talk about this thing we so seldom want to talk about.

I know no one “knows” what’s coming next although there are a lot of opinions and I’d like to hear their opinions whether they make sense to me or not.

One thing I read this week comes from the book Cosmogenesis by Brian Swimme. He relates a time of working with Father Thomas Berry and includes a conversation about Berry’s thoughts about death which also includes his explanation of Teihard de Chardin’s beliefs.

The premise of the book is that the Universe we live in is conscious, ever changing, and generous. The view of death from this perspective is different from that of the perspective of a fixed cosmos where we just disappear. (Leaving all the religious beliefs about after life to another time.)

My belief is that the purpose of contemplating death is to better understand life. Rather than being a morbid preoccupation, I believe it encourages us to celebrate each moment of the life that we are given. With that in mind, I am sharing a rather lengthy snippet from this book which has excited me in a way few recent books have.

Cosmogenesis is a mind-altering book and this snippet of conversation is a gift, quoted verbatim with quotation marks removed to simplify the reading. Basically, it is a long rendering of Berry’s response to Swimme’s query about death. I have inserted paragraph breaks just to provide space for these rich thoughts. And, emphasis added when thoughts struck me.

The challenges of life demand our full attention and concern, so I don’t normally entertain questions about death, or life after death. 

My basic orientation is that death is an intrinsic dimension of life. I am certain the universe will take care of us in death just as it has in life …

But all of us end up reflecting on this question sometime or other and perhaps now is that time for you. I’ll give you my theory of death, and then you can tell me yours. No, let’s start with Teilhard’s theory, which I believe is unique in the tradition of reflections on death and the afterlife primarily because he is thinking in the context of a developing universe. 

The vast majority of human reflection on death, including that of Thomas Aquinas and Dante, takes place in the context of a fixed cosmos. The traditional question is whether or not a person survives death. Teilhard’s answer is yes, and in that sense he stays within the Christian tradition, but his manner of reasoning is where he shows his unique vision. 

For Teilhard, development through time is the primary revelation. It is the fundamental source of meaning in the universe. By development he means the cosmic and organic evolution as discovered by scientists, but he includes his conviction that the process of evolution is entwined with the process of love, an idea he attempts to capture in his neologism, ‘amorization.’ 

Teilhard’s thinking is that a complete annihilation at death cannot be the case because in order for humans to embrace the evolutionary challenges, they must have the sense that there is a way forward, that the future is open. If humans came to regard death as their end, they could still find value in caring for their families and others in need, certainly, but it would be nothing like what they would experience were they convinced their actions had eternal significance. 

In his later years, Teilhard’s deep concern became the activation of energy. He saw nihilism not as a moral mistake but as a cosmological dead end. His primary objection to the notion that the universe is meaningless is that such a conviction enervates humanity. 

There you have it. Teilhard’s faith in the universe’s development leads to his sense of immortality. Teilhard felt humanity as a whole will one day achieve a deep conviction of immortality and this will be on the order of a major evolutionary achievement, along the lines of aerobic respiration or photosynthesis. It will lead to a massive influx of energy into the human adventure.

“As for myself,” Thomas said, “my thinking is darker, not in the sense of cynicism or depression, but in the sense of an appreciation for that which lies beyond language. I don’t believe that at our stage of development we humans have the cognitive capacities for understanding the deepest dynamics at work in the universe. Perhaps we will someday, but at the present time, the complexity of the universe far outstrips our theories. 

I like to say that to assume the complexity of the universe is captured in our theories is the same as believing Beethoven’s symphonies can be rendered by beating a garbage can with a stick.

In any event, my own personal orientation concerning these ultimate questions comes from the Palisade cliffs, which I gaze upon every morning when I write, through all the seasons, day after day, winter giving way to spring and on and on. 

We’re companions now. Earth’s tectonics constructed them, and they’ve been sending their presence in my direction for two hundred million years. I entered the conversation as Thomas Berry only a few decades ago. We don’t exchange words, but even so, a communion takes place. Humans have expressed their faith in a great variety of symbols, many of which have inspired me at one time or another. But today, if you ask for the foundations of my faith, I would say the stone cliffs of the Hudson River Palisades.

— Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme

Thinking about my time here on Planet Earth as a conversation with the Universe makes me smile and wonder if after this conversation ends, there will be a different conversation in a different place with different beings.

That appeals far more than cloud-sitting and harp-playing … although I do love both clouds and harps.

About the image: Mezcal in Oaxaca Oaxaca intoxicated me in many ways. This image began with a startling exhibit in a museum and gathered unrelated images into a self-portrait that I have never shown of a colorful yet fierce jaguar pulling me into his lair. It seems like a dream which is still playing and when I looked for an image for this post, it cried out, “Me!”