Quick Look
Experiences, observations and practical advice enabling those encountering death to meet it in an active manner, both mentally and physically.
Description
-- How can we prepare ourselves for meeting with death?
-- How can we help those experiencing the death of someone close to them?
Anyone who has been present at the death of a human being will sense that a door into another world is opened for a moment. It is a moment that calls for quiet and reverence.
At the same time, the meeting with death comes as a shock. We know that the time will come when we ourselves stand face to face with death.
This inspiring book is for those who encounter death along the way, for those facing their own death, and for those experiencing the death of someone close to them. It gathers together thoughts, feelings, experiences and observations about death, and offers both spiritual and practical guidance. It will help those facing death, and their carers, to do so actively and with preparedness.
Reviews
'Provides helpful insights and experiences for all the different aspects of death that the reader may encounter. Will be useful to anyone seeking a new orientation towards death and will provide a valuable resource for counsellors.'
-- Invisible News, December 2003
'Inspiring. The book is a practical transitional aid and is interspersed with many says of wise people so that readers can access material which harmonizes with their own experiences.'
-- The Beacon, July 2004
'An informative and uplifting book written from long experience and understanding. Helpful chapters on untimely deaths and the death of children are followed by reflections on the further path of the soul and a beautiful selection of poetry and prayers.'
-- Scientific and Medical Network, Winter 2003
'A sensitive account.'
-- The Inner Light, Autumn 2003
'A gentle, practical book.'
-- Caduceus, Spring 2004
'This is a well-produced book. The book contains many helpful and iluminating quotations and poems throughout that have the experiences of death as their theme. […] By use of judiciously chosen quotations, interspersed with practical observations and useful interpolations, the whole of the book is presented in such a way that the reader is constantly being made aware how death has been accepted and understood by other people. This is an excellent book.'
-- Peter Heathfield, New View, Autumn 2003
'Often the writing is in the form of a question which leaves the reader free to make her own judgement and to awaken his thinking about important issues. The poems and prose and verses will be a spring of inspiration and comfort for many.'
-- Camphill Correspondence, January 2004
'Readers will almost certainly feel helped by at least parts of what John Baum has included, such as the final letters of a captured young man of the Danish resistance, facing a war-time death; or the account of the last days and after of a young woman dying of AIDS.'
-- Perspectives, December 2003
'A sombre yet practical book.'
-- Greenock Telegraph, February 2004
Author
Born in Scotland, John Baum is a priest in the Christian Community in Oslo, Norway.
