[Dialogue] Planet Fitness

[Richard Alton]

*Join Planet Fitness*

I have been in the Chicago ICA Community about a year and half. When I
first arrived, I asked Terry Bergdall about where the closest gym and he
recommended the Swedish Hospital and showed me how to get there. Great
ride. A little expensive but great service at about $73 a month. Because of
inflation they just raised it to $83. Anyway, I was talking to Martin a
fellow community member about biking, and he said he biked to his gym.
Great ride and only $10/month. $10/month!! So, I go to Planet Fitness and
it is great and is a two mile bike ride. Joined.



Love the name because I am into PLANET fitness or maybe the lack of it. My
Congregation has run a series of sessions on sustainability after worship
over the last 6 months. The last session was on Palm Sunday and Dr. Michael
Hogue, Professor of Ethics, Philosophy and Theology spoken on Death and the
Planet Earth. It turns out he is writing a book on death. He proceeded to
lead us in a guided exercise on facing death:

·      What does facing death (our own, and others) free us to know and
conversely, what ignorance does death aversion bind us to?

·       How does facing death help us to notice what really matters, or
what we ultimately value? And conversely, what
duties/responsibilities/obligations does death aversion lead us to evade?

This was an amazing conversation with about 20 people for an hour and a half

Death aversion is big. Especially ecologically. The earth is impermanent
and when we discount the future, we externalize the cost of what we are
doing to the planet. This is why Dark Ecology wants us to face the abyss.
We can’t avoid the uncertainty of life, the world.

And then I found myself reading a section of the New York Book Review
called  “Hastening the End” “We humans, one writes, are an essentially
“parasitic” species, our growth and dominance has been a uniquely
disastrous process for the planet and for those other species who must live
on it”; “that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent and that we
should welcome it”



Yes, so what does facing death free us to know and do? Some say we are
living the age of death- the great extinction. This is why confronting
death is most needed in our time. How is facing our own death and
civilizations so needed?



First, death helps with our life focus. What do we want to accomplish with
this life? As Becker in The Denial of Death points out, “this question
gives hope, because it holds open the dimension of the unknown and the
unknowable, the fantastic mystery of creation that the human mind cannot
even begin to approach”  But death also releases the great perplexity of
our time: ‘The plain debasing and silly heroics of the acquisition and
display of consumer goods, the piling up of money and privileges that now
characterizes whole ways of
life.”.




Second, knowing you will die helps you focus on the now. Death enhances the
ability to live in the present. And from being right at all costs. If one
thing relatives our anger and conflicts, it is death. You appreciate more
fully our wonderful life when you truly know that your time is limited. You
don’t want to waste it.



Third, dead tends to release us from an inappropriate sense of
self-importance. Death avoidance feeds human hubris and our earth-
destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption. The antihuman revolt
shares the convictions that the page has been turned on the final chapter.
Death releases us from the absorption with our life, out to the big picture
of life. It releases us from the immediacy of our life to embrace the
vastness of existence that we are part of. It is said that death releases
love. As one article titled: “Think about your death and live better.” It
is like self-emptying, making yourself nothing to make yourself available
to all. By leaning into the reality of one’s own death, one finds
happiness- one loses the trivial life sucking care of everyday life.



In facing death, one finds the marvelous, the absolute mystery of life.



Dick Alton

ICA GreenRise since 2021

-- 
Richard H. T. Alton
ICA Global Fund
Methodist Eco-Sustainability T/F
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton at gmail.com
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
Won't you be my neighbor?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20230621/1603ee16/attachment.htm>