Читать книгу Danse Macabre - N. Thomas Johnson-Medland - Страница 6

Danse Macabre is a manuscript I have been writing—off and on—over the years in my work with the dying. I began to realize that modern man is hidden behind a series of fears when it comes to death. Part of this comes from lack of knowledge, part from failure to discuss death.

In the advent of the splintering of religion and faith (into denominations and sects) there is no one solid or consistent dogmatic approach that is held or taught across the whole of a religious or faith-based society. The great Catholic, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires (to name a few) had massive structural programs of belief and practice that unified them over space and time. Most often they used laws to maintain an epic and whole system.

This splintering has occurred in all faiths; in all religions, and in all cultures. This is true with every major religion and sect in America, as well as around the globe. It is also true with every culture, ethnicity, and gathering of people. The splintering of faiths, cultures, ethnicities, and gatherings into factions allows for an immensely divergent stream of thought and belief to emerge from the new diversity. It also poses conflict. This is true surrounding the stories we tell about death—our beliefs.

The experiment of the American melting-pot of cultures (faiths, ethnicities, and gatherings, too) has also added a more diverse population to the social/cultural mix and discussion of “death and dying in America”. We live and thrive with people of many faiths and many factions within those faiths; with many cultures and many sub-cultures within those cultures. This immense and rich milieu of religion and culture adds layers of complexity to some of the silence surrounding death, as we fear intruding or causing arguments. Add to that the sudden onslaught of information from every known corner of the globe as a result of our invasive and all pervading technologies in the digital age. We can know anything and be anywhere all of the time.

How are we to live in a multi-cultured society with layer upon layer of divergent belief surrounding us at every turn? How are we to share a common life in such close proximity with immense disparities—immense disparities that are worldwide and all inclusive. We are continually barraged with news from the entire hamlet or village, but that hamlet has become the universe, that village the cosmos. That is huge.

The work I have compiled is my own rendering of my days while taking care of dying people. I was involved in the spiritual care of dying patients and their families for almost twelve years. These words and these stories come from the work I did in and among them. I have added my own personal forays into dealing with personal deaths in my own life. I have also added my own thoughts around my own dying. I have carried, what I can, into the discussion that comes from the panoply of cultures I entered into in the care of the dying.

My hope is that these candid and simple stories about death will enable individuals and communities (families and faiths, and people with no faith) to begin to talk about the mythologies they share about death. It is also my hope that it will open communities to sensing where the need for healing exists in our lives with death. Surely, we are dancing with death throughout the whole of our lives.