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            Today our first reading is from the first book of the Christian Bible, the Book of Genesis, and our second reading is from the last book, the Revelation of John.  In the age of faith, before the advent of modern historiography, the Bible was the Christian history book, narrating the story of our world, from start to finish. 
            In our post-Darwinian age much is made of the conflict between scripture and science.  But there is one point on which they are in agreement: our world did have a beginning (whether the big bang or the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters), and that it will have an end (whether with the arrival of “a new heaven and a new earth” or of the day on which our sun will finally have burned itself out).
            This agreement is worth noting, because in the Greco-Roman world the prevailing view was that the world is eternal, having neither beginning nor end.  What is true of the world is also true of our mortal life: it too has a beginning and an end.  I have been reading Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross’s pioneering book (now 40 years old), On Death and Dying, a subject which was once tabu within the medical establishment.
            When we are young, unless we are confronted with family tragedy or natural disaster, death is something that happens to others, not to us.  Indeed, the deadly risks that some young people take may come from a phantasy of immortality. But as we grow older and suffer the loss of close relatives and friends, we are forced to contemplate our mortality, even if we personally are still in good health and hope to live many more years. 
            After introductory chapters entitled “On the Fear of Death” and “Attitudes towards Death and Dying,” Kuebler-Ross lays out the now classic five stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and (finally) acceptance.  She compares this last stage to what Bettelheim wrote about early infancy: “It was an age when nothing was asked of us, and all that we wanted was given, an age of primary narcissism.”  And so, Kuebler-Ross concludes, “at the end of our days, when we have worked and given, enjoyed ourselves and suffered, we are going back to the stage that we started out with, and the circle of life is closed.”
            In the 17th century the English poet John Donne offered a different perspective:
                        Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
                        Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so….
                        One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
                        And death shall be nor more; Death, thou shalt die.

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