I need some kindness now, Yahweh. I’m in a dark, dark place. I can hardly see, My eyes blurry from crying. My body aches from stress. … Sorrow devours me. (Everyday Psalms, Psalm 31, page […]
Tag: Death
Longevity and completeness
I feel my mortality. Perhaps it’s my job. I see lots of death. There’s really no getting around it as a hospital chaplain. Perhaps it’s my age. Hitting my 50s has coincided with the death […]
Does Psalm 91 over-promise of protection?
I hadn’t seen my sister Joy for more than a few minutes the previous Christmas. My wife and our infant son had arrived an hour before she and her family had to leave to spend […]
In the morning & in the mourning
Almost every night for the past two and a half years, I put my Dad to bed. We did the same thing every night. After visiting with one another for a while, it’d be bedtime. […]
The in-between
Between the cross and the empty tomb Are the hours Of a strange Sabbath, A brutal pause, A death-filled rest, A peace-less peace. This is where we live our lives: One long Holy Saturday, Where […]
2020 vision: What will actually happen during the next decade
Year endings and decade endings have people looking backward and forward at the same time. There’s something arbitrary about our calendars. And yet, we all use them and they shape the way we live our […]
Farewell, Miranda Harris
I was shocked to hear of the death of Miranda Harris, along with Chris and Susanna Naylor. Miranda founded A Rocha with her husband Peter more than three decades ago and Chris has been A […]
Counting our days
I think about my death a lot. I imagine what it might be like to be on my death bed, so weak I need a machine to breathe for me. I wonder who might gather […]
Farewell, Jan
On May 10, 2019, our friend Jan Peterson died, joining her husband and my mentor, Eugene Peterson, just seven months after his death. Jan lived much of the last three decades of her life in […]
Psalm 49
A rendering of Psalm 49, a wisdom poem about the emptiness of wealth and fame and the true equality brought by death.
Psalm 23
A rendering of Psalm 23, which offers a picture of the contented life, something our discontented culture needs.
The twilight of my fathers: Eugene Peterson and my Dad
Those who know me know there are two men who have most shaped my life. They are my father, Hugo Santucci, and my mentor, Eugene Peterson. These two men have shown me what a life […]
The great equalizer
I’ve seen so many dead bodies this past year that I’ve lost count — at least forty and among them my Mom. Death is a bad joke. It’s a riddle that confounds us all. There’s […]
Entering life by facing death
Death is all around us. We deal with it almost on a daily basis. All kinds of deaths. Deaths of dreams. Deaths of careers. Deaths of dignity and reputation. Deaths of the body. Deaths of […]
The importance of boredom
Something unexpected and disturbing happens quite often when people gather around a loved one who is dying: They get bored. In my work as a part-time hospital chaplain, I've seen it many times. In response to […]
Let’s talk about death
I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies this year. Some of them were elderly and should have known their days were limited. Others were fairly young and assumed they had years to go before even […]
How to live. How to die.
I don’t talk about death a whole lot. None of us do. And yet it’s always with us. My wife and I started watching a new TV show recently and more than 1,000 people die […]
Living in a world with teeth
God is not afraid of danger, pain, or death. And he’s not afraid of seeing his loved ones on paths that will lead us through all three. In fact, he guarantees that every one of us […]
Mourning the death of celebrities in our death-denying culture
David Bowie. Alan Rickman. Glen Frey. I’m sure there are others as well, but already 2016 has been a rough year on celebrities with these three deaths. While never a huge Bowie fan, his music […]
Weakness is the way
As I grow older, I am becoming more and more aware of my weaknesses, my limitations, my inabilities. My eyes are growing worse. It’s harder for me to stay in shape. I forget things easily. My […]
What will your epitaph say?
If you could sum up your life in a phrase, what would it be? And even more importantly, what would others say about you? What we think of our lives is one thing. But our […]
Dealing with fear by living in love
I am far less rational than I like to think I am. In all kinds of small and large ways, fear keeps me from doing small things that I might like to do and large […]
For those of us who are grieving
As those who live in this tragic beauty called life, as those who live at the intersection of sorrow and joy, we approach death with a strange mix of emotions. As those who follow Jesus, […]
Life after Mom — Sufjan Stevens and how to forgive your parents
I got a phone call after midnight last night. It was my Dad. My Mom had fallen down and he needed my help getting her up. So, I quickly got dressed and walked over to […]
Teddy Roosevelt and manliness
I recently finished the Pultizer Prize winning biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. It is a fascinating telling of the years leading up to Roosevelt’s presidency. But one of the themes that […]