Dying? Or Finding Oneself?

Kathleen Taylor has been a hospice counselor for many years. People ask her how she can sit everyday at the bedside of dying patients without getting burned out or depressed. In the following video, she tells us why she loves her job and what she has learned from those who are dying. She says the number one regret she hears is "I wish I had the courage to live my life and not the life others expected me to live."

Listen also for another learning: when people are close to death they shed their falseness -- that is, they no longer tolerate or speak "bullshit."

So, the question I have for you is this: Do we simply die or do we, through dying, find ourselves?

TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

What is a "Good Death?"

By day, Judy MacDonald Johnston develops children's reading programs. By night, she helps others maintain their quality of life as they near death.

Last month, she gave an excellent 6-minute TED talk (CLICK HERE) on achieving a "good death."

Over 300,000 people have watched this video. That's a good start.

She suggests taking action in five important areas of our lives:

1. The Plan
2. Advocates
3. Hospital Readiness
4. Caregiving Guidelines
5. Last Words

When thinking about the end of your life or the life of your loved ones please remember that a good death will not happen without planning. Most everyone says they want to die at home but, statistically, 80 percent of us will not.

For more information on these five areas and downloadable worksheets visit her website.

Interested in more? Listen to physician Peter Saul in his take on dying in the 21st century, something he calls a "train wreck." (CLICK HERE.)

What is Love?

What is love?

I mean, really?

The video below contains a beautiful story that links one's faith to love and caretaking.

"Brace For Impact!"

Dads, on this Father's Day, take 5 minutes out of your busy life and hear what Rick Elias has to say.

Elias was in seat 1D on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the engines went dead and he heard the pilot say: "Brace for impact?"

His only goal in life today is to be a great dad.

What kind of impact will it take for us to have the same goal?

Now What Do We Do?

We have imprisoned a significant percentage of our population during the last 20 years -- "The War on Drugs," "Three Strikes and You're Out!," and a combination of poor thinking and nastiness have enabled us to get where we are today.

The following is a story about a program at a maximum security prison in California to do something about the glaring and unacceptable problem that faces us -- our prisons do not reform nor improve the behavior of those whom we sentence there.

For me, prisons are a good example of our failure to think through our problems and, instead, simply delay solving them to another day. Locking people up and literally throwing away the key is not the way to be a more peaceful and fulfilling nation.

The following video demonstrates a way out of the darkness which now surrounds us. It is a way in which people of faith should approach evil in the world -- through transformation rather than punishment. What do you think?