A Matter of Life and Death

With a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, this is a collection of 60 reflections on death and its implications, divided into five parts: personal encounters with death, the way in which death brings wisdom, working closely with death, death and the circle of life, and death as sacred. A huge range of views emerges from these pages, with some very challenging personal stories involving the loss of children but conveying a sense of dignity and compassion. One respondent remarked that she did not live in the past, but the past lived in her. Loving and being loved is a central theme, as is the necessity to realise impermanence and let go when the time comes. Whatever the background, there is an emphasis on living the good life while we are here. Benedict reminds us to live every day with death constantly before I, while my friend Therese Schroeder-Sheker reflects that we die multiple times at different levels of being during one lifetime and that death is core to the human-making curriculum, preparing us for new life in a new form. A powerful read.