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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>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 <br>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I am interstitial space. I have been working my way through a stack of books I want to read. Most incredible has been <u>the Lakota Way</u>. I close by attaching a long quote from it and this quote from Shubert Ogden: “<span style='color:black'>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.”</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Blessings, Margaret<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>Death does not kill. Disease, accidents, rage, old age, stupidity, among others are killers. Death is only part of the process of life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>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<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:115%'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%'>Excerpted from pgs. 121-123 of <u>the Lakota Way</u> by Joseph M. Marshall III.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:150%'><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>