Embraced It Will Serve You: Encounters with Death
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“Memento mori.” Back in my seminary days I would on occasion puzzle over these Latin words. First of all, how exactly to translate them? Remember to die? Remember you’re going to die some day? Keep death before you? The greater puzzlement, though, was why keep death before you, why morbidly remind yourself of your mortality? Would not that guarantee to depress? So putting my puzzlement aside, I would go on to brighter things.
My years certainly had something to do with my inability to comprehend the wisdom in those two cryptic words. I was in my late teens and early 20s at the time, so with vigor and promise the watchwords, it made no sense to remember something so remote and seemingly morose as death.
My culture had something to do with it as well. Because death is so frightening to us, we do all we can to avoid thinking about it. Hence our virtual worship of youthfulness, our dread of wrinkles and gray. “Think positive. Look on the bright side. Focus on the present. Granted death will claim us in the end, it doesn’t have to cheat of out of life in the meantime.”
“On the contrary,” Death counters. “If you let me, I can serve you as no other servant, teach you as no other teacher. Keep conscious of me as the ancients understood, and discover life. Embrace me as your dark lover, and find energy for your mission.”
Embraced It Will Serve You invites readers to dialogue with the ever- present shadow of death in order to come to the realization amounting to a revelation: the kingdom of life is at hand!
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About the Book
“Memento mori,” intoned the ancients. But why remember death, why keep the thought of death before us? Is not the goal to live, in effect to fight death, to stave off as long as we can the wrinkles and the gray? “Think positive,” intones our culture. “Look on the bright side. Granted death will claim us in the end, it doesn’t have to cheat us out of life in the meantime.”
“On the contrary,” Death counters. “If you let me, I can serve you as no other servant, teach you as no other teacher. Keep conscious of me and discover life. Embrace me as your dark lover, and find energy in your mission.”
Embraced It Will Serve You invites readers to dialogue with the ever-present shadow of death in order to come to the realization amounting to a revelation: the kingdom of life is at hand!
About the Author
Finn spent ten years in the Society of Jesus after graduating from high school in
Among Finn’s writing is the internationally-know poem “Please Hear What I’m Not Saying.” His published works, all of which can be obtained through his website (www.poetrybycharlescfinn.com) or email address (charlesfinn@ntelos.net), include the following:
Circle of Grace: In Praise of Months and Seasons
Natural Highs: An Invitation to Wonder
For the Mystically Inclined
Contemplatively Sweet: Slow-Down Poems to Ponder
Earthtalks: Conjectures on the Spirit Journey
The Elixir of Air: Unguessed Gifts of Addiction
Deep Joy, Steep Challenge: 365 Poems on Parenting
Earth Brother Jesus: Musings Free of Dogma
All of Finn’s writing relate to the spirit journey. His own has been grounded in Catholicism and nourished by Jesuit, Taoism, Native American, Creation-Centered, and Quaker spiritualities.