Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

Description

DieWisedoes not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to makedyingeasier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working withdyingpeople and their families, StephenJenkinsonplaces death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. DieWiseteaches the skills ofdying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well.DieWiseis for those who will fail to live forever. Dyingwell,Jenkinsonwrites, is a right and responsibility of everyone.It is not a lifestyle option.It is a moral, political, and spiritual obligation each person owes their ancestors and their heirs.DieWisedreams such a dream, and plots such an uprising.How wedie, how we care fordyingpeople, and how we carry our dead- this work makesour capacity fora village-mindedness, or breaks it. Table of Contents The Ordeal of a Managed Death Stealing Meaning from Dying The Tyrant Hope The Quality of Life Yes, But Not Like This The Work So Who Are the Dying to You? Dying Facing Home What Dying Asks of Us All Kids Ah, My Friend the Enemy

STEPHEN JENKINSON MTS MSW is an activist, teacher, author, and farmer. He has a master's degree in theology from Harvard University and a master's degree in social work from the University of Toronto. Formerly a program director at a major Canadian hospital and medical-school assistant professor, Stephen is now a sought-after workshop leader, speaker, and consultant to palliative care and hospice organizations. He is the founder of The Orphan Wisdom School in Canada and the subject of the documentary filmGriefwalker.

"Stephen Jenkinson's elegant and sorrow-freighted book brings prophetic insight rather than pastoral affirmations. A true story-man, Jenkinson paints image after image on the cave wall of his parchment. Die Wise is a formidable body of work, road-tested in ways most of us hope never to know about. Stay with it, hold the sorrow as the gift it is, savor in small, immense chunks. Every word is an invitation to trade fantasy for imagination. There isn't a book like it." -Dr. Martin Shaw, author of Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language