Should you pray for the dying?

Should you pray for the dying?

Earlier this week I received a message from someone who has a young friend who has been diagnosed with a type and degree of cancer that gives them a very short life expectancy, according to the doctors.  They told me they were overwhelmed by compassion but also feeling very helpless. They asked if I had studied prayer and whether I had any thoughts on it in this situation.

I thought I might share my response with you too.  This is what I wrote:

Your question on prayer is a tough one to answer as it is such a personal thing for each individual…and requires a certain set of beliefs….so I don’t feel that whether it is helpful or effective is really something I can comment on.

To me praying for something not to happen though is coming from a place of thinking that it should be different – that there is something wrong with it as it is. Personally, to my mind, death is not bad, or wrong, or evil, or something to avoid. To me it is a perfect and beautiful part of life, it is part of the agreement we enter (that can be taken metaphorically or literally) when we come into this life: we are born into it and we will die out of it.  And we shouldn’t live till old age – by that I mean we may or we may not, but we haven’t been promised any such thing, every day is a gift and the next one isn’t ours until it arrives. We aren’t ‘supposed’ to live till 95 or 100…and from that perspective, seeing someone facing death much younger doesn’t feel wrong or unfair to me in any way. We all have a different journey and your friend’s may see this life of theirs ending soon…or later. But ultimately we cannot escape death…and we are not meant to.

If I had a prayer or a wish for your friend it would be that they use this opportunity – and it is a huge opportunity – to get clear on what matters to them, who they are, who and what they truly love, and be overwhelmed by every second of this beautiful life they are living, through coming face-to-face with their own mortality….whether this claims them soon or in many years from now.

I know this isn’t how most people see death….but this is how to feels to me to my very core.

It isn’t always easy for me to share these ideas openly.  Indeed I find it challenging every day as I know it is so different to how most of the Western world sees death.  But I arrived at this place through some seriously deep work around death…and this is exactly how I see death now.

The presence of death or the potential of death in your life – your own or someone else’s – offers an opportunity that we rarely get – to seriously evaluate who we are, what truly matters, how we are living and loving.  Great gifts can come through these opportunities…if you are open to finding them.

Kristie

xx

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