[Oe List ...] Earthrise @ Retirement

[John Epps]

Thanks Margaret for a moving and profound statement.
John Epps

On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 2:54 PM, Margaret Aiseayew via OE <
oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> 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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>
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