Facing Death, Finding Love: The Healing Power of Grief and Loss in one Familys LifeEssay Preview: Facing Death, Finding Love: The Healing Power of Grief and Loss in one Familys LifeReport this essayFacing Death, Finding Love: The Healing Power of Grief and Loss in One Familys Life was written by Dawson Church. 1994. 140p. Aslan Publishing. Dawson Church is a publisher, editor and author. Previous books he has authored or co-authored include The Heart of the Healer and Communing with the Spirit of Your Unborn Child. He works as CEO of Atrium Publishers Group – a book distributor- and lives with his wife and two children in Lake County, California.
Dawson Church starts out with his acknowledgments of appreciation to all the people that have supported him in the writing and publishing of this book. The introduction by Churchs editor, Hal Zina Bennett, Ph.D., reflects the truths revealed in the books contents as reminders that in opening our hearts and minds to the greatest mysteries of all – the vast mysteries of life and death – we discover a love that is as powerful in the receiving as in the giving, transcending all our deepest and most grievous emotions. Maybe the best way to describe and sum up the contents of Churchs book that readers are about to discover is as follow
“It is perhaps in grief that we discover the force that carried us once again into incarnation, the reason we incarnated in the first place. It is in the tearing open of heart that we discover how guarded our lives have become, how small a cage we have traded off for safe ground. We see how our work is to be more loving, to live more fully in an often confusing world.”
Church uses nine chapters together with his afterword and appendix A: Grieving Rituals as well as appendix B: Connecting With the Soul to cover all the contents of this book.
Chapter one – The Death – starts out with the vision that death can come very unexpectedly to anyone at anytime or any place when one least prepares for it. Death to Church and his wife as well as to many people in the world are hard to recognize and deal with. He keeps come up with questions such as “We felt him kicking just last night. What could have happened between then and now? We didnt feel any struggle. Surely he would have alerted us if something were wrong? He could have communicated his distress, and we could have known and perhaps done something.” Church couldnt get over the unexpected death of Montague because he thought that no way it could possibly be happened when he and his wife did not neglect any aspect of caring for the infant in the womb. He has been totally available to his wife emotionally. Everyone at work has supported her, and she has taken great care of herself throughout the pregnant progress. The calm wisdom of their souls coexisted with the upswelling agony of loss in their hearts when Montagues death comes so unexpectedly. However, he and his wife try to give themselves time to grieve and deal with their own needs.
Chapter two – The Prayer – has reminded many people of the idea that when they reach the bottom of hopelessness causes by death, they tend to turn to God with prayers that hope to help them with their distress or help eased their pain. The author of this book has proved the existence of this idea through his prayers to God with sincere belief as describe as follow…
“I moved into a state of heightened awareness. Closing my eyes, I expressed our petition to God. I asked for the presence of Jesus to be with me. I prayed for the healing of my loved one, and before my minds eye I felt the bleeding slow down and stop. Then I prayed that Brendas body would, from its own amazing internal pharmacy, manufacture the clotting agent, endorphins, and other chemicals it needed for the birth. Her body felt so healthy and vibrant that I had no doubt that this prayer was answered.” Church believes that without prayer and the awareness of Gods presence, he and his wife could have taken months to move through a huge chunk of the grieving process and reach a stage of acceptance.
Chapter three – The Birth – signifies a variety of forms and shapes that death can be transformed. In this case, it is signified through the birth of Montagues dead body. When holding Montagues dead body in his arms, Churchs thought expresses that he had never seen death this close before. He had certainly never touched death. He thinks that if anyone, a few hours before, had told him that he would wish to touch the body, he would have denounced them as having an unhealthy and morbid fascination with death. Yet he knew that he needed to be fully within this experience with death, rather than pushing it away from him. Churchs thoughts also has served as the purpose to express the very common way of how most people in the world are looking at death although it is an everyday occurrence that happens everywhere.
Chapter four – Friends, Enemies and Children – serves as the purpose to remind us to be patient, caring, loving, and understanding of our partner and our children even when they may act like our enemy. Its worth to know that through thick and thin, through good and bad time, well be ready to help each other successfully overcome the pain and grief that bring by death.
Chapter five – Welcoming the Soul – gives us the idea that if we are aware only of the physical body and stay centered in the level of appearances without paying attention to our soul (spirit), we own only the loss. To the author, this would be a truly terrible legacy to have a “tragedy” and be left only with the disaster. Church believes that by centered in the spiritual realm, he also owns the meaning; this transforms the loss and gives it a context of purpose. Suddenly he realizes that it isnt a loss; that in the great cosmic design energy is neither created nor destroyed. The “tragedy” brings him closer to love, and all he truly and ultimately
s to come fully to the divine and to God, and the Divine and the individual’s ultimate goal – to unite with God and to become the perfect, even and powerful ”ranger of ourselves.
–A long line of books by L.G. Jung (and others) that helped people to understand our power to change and change. To those who read and understand these texts, this book is a huge source of resources that help them to move beyond what one is accustomed to: being the individual to make changes with the spirit world and to create, shape, and destroy themselves.
–The Soul World –I wrote this book to help people understand that there is nothing outside their own ‘real and’ spiritual world. It never was a set of ‘real’ realities, only an ‘imagination,’ or an ‘intentions’ that existed from the beginning.
“I found this book so inspiring because the truth is we can have the Soul World! We can have people learn to love God, to be free from death, to change their minds and their lives; so that we may reach in Christ the great, righteous God, or to be fully able to share God’s truth. –“Love your enemy –I created a true Soul World – it was an attempt to give people meaning to a life they never had. I hope that through you and by your writing I can share God’s love for mankind and His love for the Soul World. –“You’re the one to set your mind, body, and soul on it in order to be more true to true you believe. And then after you have all of your problems resolved, you come back to the True Soul world and you realize that you’ve taken in all the wrong things. –“So what does this tell us about the Soul World that is going on within you, the ‘Spirit World’? –People can find comfort in the new experience of being spiritually active and living a soulful life as they know how. There are no illusions – those within are truly spiritually active and live a life like any other. –“There is a great mystery in what I believe is a spiritual world. It is not some set of ‘real’ realities or just some illusion of ‘real’ realities inside of us that they had been created to explore. –“I am living there because I have been a Soul World: to live in and live an authentic, authentic Soul World. I cannot help but