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GOOD MORNING.  Today’s anniversary of the funeral of King George VI, which took place sixty-six years ago, reminds me that one of the most privileged roles in a clergyperson’s life is to accompany someone towards death.  It can be the point of greatest personal vulnerability and honesty. 

One book before others changed the was I look at life, by making me think of my own death in a different way.  Lessons from the Death Zone is an account by Philip Gould of suffering cancer, failing to find a cure and the process – indeed the grace – of his own dying, so searing, frank and yet, uplifting that I read it through the night.

When death became certain, Philip expected depression and fear; instead, he experienced an extraordinary intensification of life.  Everyday sensations – from light catching blossoms on a tree to the smell of coffee – became heightened; barriers melted; with his family, the most lovingly transparent conversations, unsurpassed tenderness and laughter; with friends, encounters of luminous honesty.  And a growing faith that brought deep calm. 

So much of contemporary culture ignores death and recoils from pain.  Yet, Philip writes that his experience could not have come without suffering.  He describes how, to his shock, once he accepted the fact of his own dying, his last weeks became the best time of his life – unsurpassed in beauty. 

Philip’s book is one man’s experience of how a death sentence gradually became a gift.  His conclusion: the grace of accepting death transformed him.  His advice: if we turn our faces from suffering, especially our own, we can miss the wisdom it can teach.

Lord and Creator of human life, give to the hearts of the sick, hope; to the dying, comfort; and to all of us, compassion.  AMEN.