Not Your Grandmother’s Death Panel
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press Writer, is reporting that end-of-life planning has survived the critical hysteria and is still in the Democratic health care bill released on Thursday. This is the provision for Medicare-paid counseling that Sarah Palin, who now admits that she’s gone rogue, called “death panels” for seniors.
If. by some fluke, the provision actually makes it into the final health care bill, paid end-of-care counseling could be a boon to Pagans who are sick unto death and trying to cope with non-Pagan family and healthcare providers. Most Pagans believe that Death is a natural part of Living, and a great many Pagans believe in some form of reincarnation. We tend to see Time as a circle or a Spiral. Christians tend to see Time as linear (a view that can turn decisions on about beginning-of-life issues, end-of-life issues, world affairs, and the environment into Hell on Earth).
Starhawk (Miriam Simos) began thinking seriously about end-of-life rituals when her mother died in 1992. Starhawk wrote, “When you are dying, you do not have the energy to create. When you are grieving you are already overwhelmed, faced with decisions and demands at a time when coping extraordinarily difficult. You are in no position to design new rituals or write new liturgies.”
At that time Starhawk and her brother were grateful for a long tradition of Jewish rules and rituals for dealing with death. “My mother was a psychotherapist, an expert in loss and grief who worked daily with the bereaved….After accompanying her through the process of her dying, I vowed to create Pagan liturgy for death. ” She began collecting the chants and prayers that were already in use in the Pagan community. At first the pages were photocopied and faxed around the country as needed. And then she turned over her collection to M. Macha Nightmare. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, by Starhawk, M. Macha Nightmare & The Reclaiming Collective was published in 1995.
The book contains sections on “Pagan Tradition,” “The Pagan View of Death.” “Death Has Many Faces (AIDS, children, Violence, and Sudden Death).” and “Carrying On.” There are dozens of rituals, prayers, songs and chants, poems. meditations and visualizations written by many members of the Pagan community. For a young religious movement without accumulated centuries of wisdom literature, The Pagan Book of Living and Dying has been a great gift to the community.
Online I have recently discovered the work of Clare Slaney in the UK. According to her profile: “I ran the Pagan Hospice and Funeral Trust, later the Voyager Trust, from 1992 and work as a Chaplain and psychotherapist.” She writes several blogs which may insight to folks who are dealing with their mortality or assisting someone else who is critically ill. The main one is Pagan Chaplaincy: Reflections, suggestions, questions on being clergy in a religion with no priesthood. The second one is Caring For The Pagan Patient: For non-Pagan health care professionals. And the third one is Being a Pagan in Hospital. Only Pagan Chaplancy is updated regularly, but the other two have lasting value.
