In cultures around the globe people resign themselves to death as an inevitable part of life and, well, it is. However, is no further reflection needed? We are born; we live, and we die. Nobody escapes this trinity of experiences, and so, why worry about it? But is inevitability a ticket to denial? Do we push the inevitability of our own deaths into some dark corner until forced to do otherwise? This session grapples with the notion that we can prepare to “die well” in the way that we “live well.” But what resources are available to us to do so? Tapping into resources available in analytical psychology, music, spirituality, philosophy, literary studies, and mysticism, among others, this session assists us in thinking critically about how a life lived meaningfully can result in a meaningful death – albeit with some intentional preparation along the way.
This paper argues that a close reading of the Red and Black Books suggest Carl Jung (1875-1961) understood his metapsychology, entitled Analytical Psychology, as a preparation for death. More specifically, it argues that Liber Novus is a Gnostic-Christian Book of the Dead. In it, Jung psychoanalytically reinterprets concepts from heretical Christian thinkers like Meister Eckhart and Valentinus. Death and resurrection is reframed as psychotherapeutic introversion, and “the birth of God in the soul” as a result of a psychic askesis: the individual withdraws their identification with the archetypes to purify the soul. At the same time, Jung elevates psychological transformation to metaphysical necessity; without individuation, there is no salvation. The apokatastasis (ie, restoration) of an individual’s soul and their God, or an individual and divine counterpart, is only possible at death to those who have individuated. In Jung’s view, this is the true way of Christ, forgotten by traditional Christianity.
The worm is often assumed to be a symbol of humiliation, self-deprecation, and creatureliness by scholars of Western Christianity. In this paper I show how the figure of the worm is used by medieval Christians less as a humility-topos than as a figure with which to explore what it meant to be human. Reading the writing of mystics such as Heinrich von Nördlingen and Mechthild von Magdeburg, I highlight how articulations of their own worminess enabled Christians to mark interior aspects of their humanity, which in turn enabled them claims to power that ran counter to the dominant patriarchy. Articulating internal states of the soul through a paradoxical hyperbolization of the worm which–according to medieval bestiaries–is only flesh, when medieval Christians refer to themselves as worms, they offer a challange to dominant 21st century consolidations of power that otherwise attempt to homogenize what it means to be human.
This paper will explore how awareness of one’s mortality is related to meaning making and spirituality. It will do so by examining Soren Kierkegaard’s claim in “At a Graveside” that “to think of oneself as dead is earnestness.” By clarifying what Kierkegaard means by “earnestness,” it will propose a model for facing mortality that is both existential and spiritual, arguing that God lends infinite significance to life despite death. A first section will define Kierkegaard’s “earnestness” against his category of “mood.” A second section will explore whether the existential understanding of mortality articulated by psychiatrist Irvin Yalom is equivalent to Kierkegaard’s earnestness. A third section will argue that Yalom’s view, while meeting many of Kierkegaard’s criteria for earnestness, misses the mark because it fails to consider the spiritual dimension of earnestness. Finally, the conclusion will apply Kierkegaard’s existential and spiritual model of earnestness to individuals struggling with meaninglessness and mortality.
This paper explores the use of Arvo Pärt’s music in palliative care as a form of Christian spiritual practice of preparation for death. It begins by exploring a brief history of the use of art in devotional practice to prepare people for death, tracing its evolution through its origin in medieval devotional techniques, to the decline of such practices during the Reformation, their reinvention through the romantic tradition of bildung, on to their continual evolution in the present day. I argue that Pärt’s distinctive compositional techniques (namely, tintinnabuli and the inclusion of silence) afford patients experiences both of divine presence and transcendence, which provides consolation in the face of death. Further, I suggest that even though Pärt’s music is used in largely secular context of medical care, it emerges from his deeply held Orthodox faith, in ways that have striking implications for Christian spiritual practice. This paper will include clips of the music discussed in the paper.