Dying with grace

We do not know how to die in grace, because we do not know how to grow old gracefully. Growing old must be a process of cleansing the self, a way of getting ready for ultimate confrontation. If life is a pilgrimage, death is an arrival, a celebration. The last word should be neither craving nor bitterness, but peace, gratitude. We have been given so much. Why is the outcome of our lives, the sum of our achievements, so little? Our embarrassment is like an abyss. Whatever we give away is so much less than what we receive. Perhaps this is the meaning of dying: to give one’s whole self away.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 377

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Well, that's the final snippet from this book, and a very appropriate one, too. It's been a long journey through the book from the time I picked it up at a thrift store until today, in fact about eleven months! I hope the few of you who stuck around for it enjoyed it. I highly recommend the book, and basically anything Heschel wrote. I find him a stimulating discussion partner.

I'm not sure what I'll be reading next. Or even if I'll keep posting to the blog with any kind of regularity. I'm planning on continuing the copyediting posts, but beyond that, I don't know. So much of what I'm reading right now doesn't lend itself to small snippets—without the context they make no sense. We'll see. Blogging has changed dramatically since I started in October, 2005, and now over 6000 posts later, I'm not sure if it's worth continuing. My readership has consistently shrunk over the last 5 years, which is understandable, as I'm rarely, if ever, posting anything other than small quotations from books on obscure topics : )
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