[Oe List ...] Earthrise @ Retirement

[Margaret Aiseayew]

Since the United Methodist Church was going to kick me out into retirement
next year, I decided to beat them to the punch and retire this year instead.
This decision was encouraged by the fact that I was experiencing the church
as not very united, not particularly 
Wesleyan, and not reflective of the dynamic of the Church in history these
days.  Since this decision, I had been praying for a door or window to open
that would allow me to focus my next lifetime's work on death and dying.
Just three weeks before the Iowa Annual Conference retirement ceremony I
connected with the Death Midwife network and jumped through.

Now that might seem like the interference of magical thinking rather than a
God Wink, but there is no doubt in my mind that final reality was ultimately
engaged.  My stepmother, Dorothy Mae Appelgate died the next week.  The week
after that, I heard that my college roommate and dear friend Dixie Binning
had also died.  There was almost a weeks "respite" while we did Vacation
Bible SchooI (for which I am too old) before learning of the deaths of
Garnet Banks, Bev Salmon and Mamie Tucker.

I am beginning to wonder if the window I should have gone through may have
been about grieving.  Not only have these five companions completed their
journeys, most of my connections here are in need of reevaluation due to
retirement.  It has been quite a kick in the seat of the pants.  "You want
to go in a new direction?"  well let me help you take off.

I am interstitial space.  I have been working my way through a stack of
books I want to read.  Most incredible has been the Lakota Way.  I close by
attaching a long quote from it and this quote from Shubert Ogden:  "Whatever
else may befall us and however long or short may be the span of our lives,
we are each embraced in every moment within God's boundless love and thereby
have the ultimate destiny of endless life in and through the eternal." 

Blessings, Margaret

 

When all is said and done there is only one truth that is unwavering.  It
has endured and will always endure because it will stand unabashedly and
without apology.  That truth is death, and it is the one that is avoided and
most feared by American society.  But it should be the standard for truth
against which all others are measured.  And we will find that nothing can
compare with its honesty and faithfulness.

 

Death does not kill.  Disease, accidents, rage, old age, stupidity, among
others are killers.  Death is only part of the process of life.

 

The truth about death is simple.  It will happen.  Nothing is more
inevitable, no matter how vigorously we deny it or fight it.  Death will
come for us regardless of how powerful, famous, rich, beautiful,
influential, irreverent or lowly we are.  There is no way to fight it.  We
can fight to live, but we will always lose the fight with death.  Thinking
of death in those terms creates the illusion that it is an enemy, but it
isn't out enemy; it is, when all is said and done, our truest friend

 

The most profound and reassuring truth about death is that it is a part of
life.  Life begins with birth and ends with death.  With no other journey
you travel can you know how it will end.  We begin dying the moment we are
born, which means living well is dying well.  That is the truest measure of
any being.

 

The final-and perhaps the greatest-truth about death is that it is the great
equalizer; it connects all living beings to its truth.  Every form of life
shares with us the same journey that begins with birth and ends with death.
No one being or species, not the most powerful, nor the most arrogant, nor
the wisest will ever alter that truth.

 

Excerpted from pgs. 121-123 of the Lakota Way by Joseph M. Marshall III.

 

 

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