Our Mission
We are a center for experiential education, rooted in the Gospels, encouraging the transformation of human consciousness through contemplation, and equipping people to be instruments of peaceful change in the world.
November 9, 2011
Grass in Tree Trunk (detail) by © Shirin McArthur
Choose Life - Choose Death
We must learn how to walk through the stages of dying. We have to grieve over lost friends, relatives, and loves. Death cannot be dealt with through quick answers, religious platitudes, or a stiff upper lip. Dying must be allowed to happen over time, in predictable and necessary stages, both in those who die graciously and in those who love them. Grief is a time where God can fill the tragic gap with something new and totally unexpected. Yet the process cannot be rushed.
It is not only the loss of persons that leads to grief, but also the loss of ideals, visions, plans, places, and our very youth. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross helped us name those stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Grief work might be one of the most redemptive, and yet still unappreciated, ministries in the church. Thank God, it is being discovered as a time of spacious grace and painful gift.
Adapted from Near Occasions of Grace, p. 99
Starter Prayer:
Lord, teach me to choose life.
If you are inspired by Fr. Richard's Daily Meditations,
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Radical Grace, the publication of the CAC
and visiting the CAC Mustard Seed Resource Center!
