 |
| Someone has kicked the bucket |
By Morris Dean
To meet Jesus is most commonly a euphemism for dying. You'll hear people say, for example, "So-and-so has gone to meet Jesus." It's a way of avoiding saying that the person died. The more common saying, "So-and-so has passed [or passed away]," serves the same purpose.
Some speakers (and writers) use meet Jesus more literally, referring to a person's having a vision of coming face to face with Jesus (or with someone who looks like what the person imagines Jesus looked like). There have been many reports of such visions, usually by persons who think they are about to die. These visions could be euphemistic also, in the sense that they protect the dying person from contemplating death, in favor of an imagined reprieve.
What's the origin of the term?
To meet Jesus derives from Christian mythology, in which the historical personage, the itinerant apocalyptic preacher Jesus of Nazareth was said to have risen from the dead after his execution for challenging the civil authority, and was further said to have ascended to heaven to await reunion with his followers, who would similarly rise from the dead.
It's easy to see how the euphemistic use could have arisen from such a myth, which many – for reasons hard to fathom – find comforting.
Strictly speaking, the term shouldn't be used for non-Christians, although it often is. Meeting Jesus is like Kleenex; the brand name has become vernacular speech.
| Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean |
Some people look forward to meeting Jesus, and the desperate hope it will happen soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post Morris. Coincidentally I have been hosting a seminar and a screening dealing with death and end of life issues. What better meditation in this time of vigils in the long nights, awaiting the rebirth of the sun or the birth of the Son?
ReplyDeleteas a syllabus for one of the discussions I printed a series of paragraphs expressing various afterlife strategies people of different persuasions have come up. I asked the participants to describe the ones that best described their own take on death and which one least described their feelings of reality.
“I’m not afraid of death.
I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
—Woody Allen
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
From a young age we see around us that grief is mostly an affliction, a misery that intrudes into the life we deserve, a rupture of the natural order of things, a trauma that needs coping and management What if grief is a skill, in the same way that love is a skill, something that must be learned and cultivated and taught? What if grief is the natural order of things, a way of loving life anyway? Grief and the love of life are twins, natural human skills that can be learned first by being on the receiving end and feeling worthy of them, later by practicing them when you run short of understanding. In a time like ours, grieving is a subversive act.
—Stephen Jenkinson
"Life is sorrow". - Gautama Buddha
DeleteI'm told this is the starting point of his religion.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think I restored the proper order now.
DeleteYou might want to give me a trial as an associate editor. I usually have a lot to say on matters ecological and metaphysical.
Bob, thanks for several things: Your comment (both versions - I've already forwarded the first one, which quoted Rilke, to our German-speaking contributor, Rolf Dumke); your work to improve it (although I found/find both quite sensible); and your offer to serve as a contributing editor (alongside the person through whom we made acquaintance, Ed Rogers).
DeleteI'll send this comment to you via a Facebook message and include my email address, so that we might discuss arrangements via email.
Unfortunately, I permanently deleted your first comment, stupidly assuming that you had simply posted the same thing twice, then realized it and deleted it yourself initially (which is not so deep as permanently deletion).
By the way, Bob, I cannot edit a posted comment, even one of my own. The only remedy is to delete and repost a revised version, as you have done.
DeleteAlso, I highly recommend always copying the comment to the pasteboard before either previewing or publishing it. Blogger too often "loses" comments (including mine).
ReplyDeleteThe stages, popularly known by the acronym DABDA, include:
1—Denial, 2—Anger, 3—Bargaining, 4—Depression, 5—Acceptance
Kübler-Ross originally developed this model based on her observations of people suffering from terminal illness. She later expanded her theory to apply to any form of catastrophic personal loss, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or income, major rejection, the end of a relationship or divorce, drug addiction, incarceration, the onset of a disease or chronic illness, infertility, as well as many tragedies and disasters (and even minor losses).
One thing we can be sure of is that we will die, everybody will. Some people do not like the thought of this and don’t accept it, they prefer to think that death is not the end of this but we might live on, perhaps in another life on earth or in another place. There’s no evidence to support the idea that our minds could survive the end of our bodies. What sense could we make of the things that we value? Love, experience, communication, achievement, and the warmth of the sun on our faces, if we were disembodied. Think about reading a good book or eating a delicious cake, these can be great pleasures but one of the things that can makes them pleasures is that they come to an end, a book that went on and on forever and a cake that you would never stop eating would both soon lose their appeal.
Death is a natural part of life, it makes sense for us to try not to be afraid of this but instead to come to terms with it, then we can focus on finding meaning and purpose in the here and now making the most of the one life we know we have and helping others to do the same. When we do die we will live on in the work we’ve done and in the memories of the other people whose lives we have been part of. Our bodies will break up and become part again of the cycle of nature.
Stephen Fry for The British Humanist Association (BHA).
It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,
to no longer practice customs barely acquired,
not to give a meaning of human futurity
to roses, and other expressly promising things:
no longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands,
and to set aside even one’s own
proper name like a broken plaything.
Strange: not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange
to see all that was once in place, floating
so loosely in space. And it’s hard being dead,
and full of retrieval, before one gradually feels
a little eternity.
Rainer Maria Rilke from the First Duino Elegy
Great! You reposted your first comment (or an improved version of it, I suspect). Thanks, Bob.
DeleteI just got around to reading this Bob. I've looked death in the face so many times, I'd feel lonesome without the cold hand on my shoulder.
ReplyDelete