Category: Death
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Allowance for Lament
I have been generally struggling with many Christians seeming inability to deal with lament. I don’t know whether it is the trap of the positive thought movement or if people just fear emotions other than happiness, but I’m finding people are way quicker to condemn individuals for lamenting than for expressing happy idyllic skewed images…
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Tony
My dad Anthony (Tony) Louis Passaro Jr. was born on August 23, 1950 over a month premature. He was the only child of my grandmother Mary and grandfather Anthony L Passaro Sr. My grandma had several prior miscarriages before the birth of her only child. From the little I know of his birth, I know…
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17. Anesthesia
As you drift off, you will finally lose that weight, you’ve been telling yourself you should do something about. you will forget the trauma and the triumph the lull you feel is a silent lullaby rocking you once, into slumber Your breathing corpse maintains its complexion you will stay beautiful in your absence you might…
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Last Call: On Grief and Time
When someone my age dies, grief comes from all angles: from parents, from siblings, from friends, from children. The older ones carried the deceased as far as they could in the ways they knew how. The ones younger expected to be carried, guided, molded. But when someone…
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Mary
It’s hard to imagine the heart failing of someone who loved me so well. Maybe she was finally convinced we’d be okay without her. Maybe her body was just finished; certainly not her mind. Maybe it was just time. I think I’ve learned you can prepare to make an end of living, but not death, for…
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Willing But So Weak
I had one of those deathbed Jesus moments last week. I was with a patient while they died whom was reconciled to God the week before. I did not save the man, all I did was remind him that God was willing to forgive him because of the work of Jesus Christ. All I could…
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A Time Before Certainty
Matthew 13:1-32 I worked on an organic farm for 4 seasons. It’s interesting how many factors go into having a fruitful crop: the seed, the soil, the sun, the water, the bugs. Some of these can be controlled. We can add water, we can spray pesticides (technically not in organic farming). Much of farming maintains…
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The Gospel of Love: Fill the World with Stories
John 21: 15-25 – Word Feed If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. The Gospel of John ends with the author telling us that Jesus did too many good things to contain in writing. Jesus, likewise,…
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The Finishing Gospel: Death of the Saves Man
John 19:16-42 – Are We Living or Dying? Yesterday, I taught my second to last class on the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). We discussed the crucifixion and the resurrection. What is interesting to me about John’s gospel is the things he notes about Jesus during the crucifixion. Jesus is deeply concerned for his mother.…
The Reconstructed 