new church life: november/december 2017
other creature struggles to improve upon its own nature.
Nature itself, therefore, urges – in fact, requires – us to raise our minds
above nature. What else is science but a perpetual effort to overcome and free
ourselves from the restrictions imposed upon us by time and space? Nothing
in the room around you – the lamp, telephone, computer, the clothes you are
wearing – is natural.
As human beings we are not naturally at home in nature. Nature is, in a
sense, unnatural to us! It seems paradoxical, but only if the essential, spiritual
component of human nature is denied.
(WEO)
when breath becomes air
One of the most memorable books I’ve read recently is When Breath Becomes
Air: What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death? by Paul Kalanithi. It is
the sad, humbling, profound, inspiring story of a brilliant young neurosurgeon
struck down by lung cancer. Here was a man who had chosen his career as a
calling, dedicated his life to saving lives and then was forced to confront death
himself – while teaching all of us about the meaning of life.
Paul Kalanithi was a gifted man. He had degrees in English literature,
human biology, history and the philosophy of science and medicine from
Stanford and Cambridge, before graduating from the Yale School of Medicine.
He died much too young at 37 but never felt sorry for himself or challenged
God with “Why me?” He accepted what was inevitable and was determined
to face death with courage and integrity. And with this book – a painful
obsession in the last year of his life – he still is profoundly influencing the lives
of countless people.
Much of that was fueled by his own love and empathy for his patients.
Once the tables were turned and the life-saving doctor became the suffering
patient, it added depth to his perspective. “Instead of being the pastoral figure
aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused.”
He tells a sad story of learning that a good friend and colleague had taken
his life when a patient he had operated on died, and how he wished he could
have been with his friend then. “I wish I could have told Jeff what I had come
to understand about life, and our chosen way of life. Death comes for all of us.
For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing organisms. Most lives
are lived with passivity toward death – it is something that happens to you
and those around you. But Jeff and I had trained for years to actively engage
with death, to grapple with it, like Jacob and the angel, and, in so doing, to
confront the meaning of life. We had assumed the onerous yoke, that of mortal
responsibility. Our patients’ lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death
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