Reading Time: 3 minutes I’m on about bedtime again— but this time it’s the soundtrack. My mother sung me to sleep for most of my childhood, and I love her for it. In hopes that my own children will profess love for me in their eventual blogs, I sing to them every night as well. And for no other […]
Death & Dying
Grappling with the difficult questions of death and dying from a secular, nonreligious point of view.
Posted inDeath & Dying
northing at midlife
Reading Time: 3 minutes Reader Jim Lemire comments: All this talk of death, these midlife blog changes. what’s next? A Ferrari and a bikini-clad coed? Reader A.C. emails: You mention other books in waiting. All parenting? All secularist? Out with it! In the face of those two perfect setups, I am unable to muster the simple self-control to not […]
Posted inDeath & Dying
the long habit, part III
Reading Time: 5 minutes Death [is] the only immortal who treats us all alike. MARK TWAIN’S last written statement, quoted in Moments with Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine Why is it, that those who die (or nearly die, depending on your definitions) and are revived, regardless of culture, religious beliefs or age, so often describe the near-death experience […]
Posted inDeath & Dying, Parenting & Family
the long habit, part I
Reading Time: 4 minutes What, me worry? Epicurus of Samos, philosopher The long habit of living indisposeth us to dying. Thomas Browne, dead person If you haven’t visited The Death Clock, you really must. Enter your date of birth, height, weight and Body Mass Index — a measure of fitness, or more to the point, fatness — and the […]
Posted inDeath & Dying
god’s burning love for me
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Minneapolis Star Tribune contacted me a few weeks back to see if I’d mind being featured in their “Believer” profile, a weekly sidebar in the Faith & Values section. Why not. They sent a few questions and gave me a 200-word limit. Here’s the result: BELIEVER Dale McGowan, 44, Robbinsdale Occupation: Writer. Identifies as: […]
Posted inDeath & Dying, Parenting & Family
Jerry Falwell and the absent dancers
Reading Time: 6 minutes To philosophize is to learn how to die. Michel de Montaigne Oh relax. I’m not going to impugn the recently departed Jerry Falwell. Christopher Hitchens is taking care of that, God bless ‘im. I will grant, for reasons unclear to me, the traditional period of immunity enjoyed by the newly demised. It was Falwell’s death […]