Читать книгу Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death - Ray Simpson - Страница 34

When the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. KAHLIL GIBRAN¹⁵

Is anything more beautiful than the transformation of a chrysalis into a butterfly? Some people believe that there is one thing more beautiful even than that: the transformation of a human from an earth creature into a being no longer bound by earth.

A human wreck brought into one of Mother Teresa’s homes said, ‘I will have lived the life of a beast, and I shall die like an angel.’

Marie de Hennezel, in her book Intimate Death, tells of her visit to a 25-year-old drug addict on the day she announced she was going to die of cancer. Abandoned at birth by her prostitute mother, the addict had lived a hard, loveless life, ceasing at nothing to slake her wild thirst for love.

When Marie arrived, the patient deliberately pulled from her face the oxygen tubes which kept her breathing. She moved into the position women adopt for childbirth. Then she pushed down her legs as if she were giving birth.

Spellbound, Marie stroked her, and knew intuitively that she must not replace the oxygen tubes. Into her mind came Michael de M’Uzan’s words about the spiritual labour that goes on inside every dying person – ‘an effort to give birth to oneself completely before leaving’. This young woman, who had been pushed to the edge of life, was birthing herself into a new world.¹⁶

It is not only at the end of life, or in the mythic wizard world of Harry Potter, that transformations take place. They can take place during our journey through life. We can practise discarding things that have had their day, and being birthed into something new.

Is there a transformation waiting to happen in your life? By allowing something new to come into being now, you will be better able to allow something new to come into being at the end of the journey.