Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul Kindle Edition

I seem to have an unpopular opinion about this book (and I’m a death care worker so it’s not because I’m scared of the topic.) Jenkinson is a bit relentless and contradictory in his analysis of what everyone is doing wrong, contradictory and vague in definitions for good and bad death, and a bit essentialist and problematic in his dichotomies around western and non-western cultures. I started skimming after 70 pages to see if it would get to the part where I could figure out what he DID believe in but even at the end when he somewhat goes there, he seems he can’t help continuing his jabs at attitudes he disagrees with. Another way to say this is that I just couldn’t figure out what he was really trying to say in the book. I thought the overture/intro was gorgeous but the rest wasn’t really written in that tone. I guess a lot of people adore this book and him so follow your gut on it, but it didn’t land with me.

I really wanted to understand this book, to digest it and have it be of some aid to me while actively grieving as I was watching my 94 year old father' health decline. That being said it was a difficult read and maybe just a mere 100 pages and I decided to buy the audiobook. This enabled me to hear the author's words, hear him accentuate and emphasize what needed to heard. Oh and what a delight it was. Sometimes would read along as he spoke sometimes just listen without the written word. This also allowed me to be able to replay what he had just said if I didn't understand it. At times, whole paragraphs of the book I didn't understand but I'd repeat them in his words and listen again and again until I got it.The richness of his words spoken by him enabled me to really glean much from his beautiful life's work.

When I was in college the books of Carlos Castaneda ("Don Juan Series") were all the rage, and I consumed the three that were available. I was fascinated by his (Don Juan's) description of Death as my Ally. It seemed so thrillingly dangerous and exciting to have a powerful teacher whose proportions were close to infinity. Obviously, at eighteen, and materially secure, death seems far away.That college girl is long gone, and I have lost friends and family to war, accident, murder, sickness, and old age; and my own eventual death has assumed real, normal proportions. I have been a witness and participant in how my culture handles death, and would never wish a hospital passing on any of us. But how to accept and learn from my dying time, and how to let death guide my living?Enter Stephen Jenkinson's marvelous book. I saw the DVD first, so I was prepared for his method of storytelling, and found the writing clean, clear, humane, loving, honest, and wholly helpful. While I am currently healthy and strong, I won't be forever. Also my husband and I have taken my mother to live with us, so we live daily with her ageing as well as our own. To be reminded so well that life is a privilege and not a right, and to have Jenkinson's help in putting all my other losses into a proper context, including the tragedy that passes for their end of life care, is deeply reassuring. Now I have a way to reach back to Death as Ally, and use that understanding properly to live every day. Thank you, Stephen Jenkinson, for writing this book.

After reading Die Wise I feel as though I've been on a sort of walkabout. I have a clarity of vision that brings forth more interesting questions. Stephen's way of writing is challenging in the way that appreciating the taste of something new and you're not sure if you like it or not is. I found myself re-reading numerous paragraphs over and over again. And they would often leave my linear mind wanting, but something would open in my emotional field, like catching the scent of a summer lily, that would make me pause and with a sense of attention and stillness.I work in the medical field and have seen the damage caused by "if you can do something, you must." And I have seen the damage caused by military mindset toward healing. I too feel strongly we need different metaphors and options.Die Wise is not an easy read, and if you decide to engage this work, take it in small doses. Savor and simmer what his words call forth in your mind and emotions. This is a book that encourages living into the questions. And in our bullet pointed solution based internet world, this kind of inquiry is deeply nourishing to the way they human heart loves to wander and wonder.

I work with alot of hospice patients and with the geriatric population daily. Last year I witnessed perhaps 30ish deaths I have seen people who are trapped in the process of dying for to long and those who beg for more time but once they get that more time beg for relief from what more time now looks like with catheters colostomy bags comfort meds and death phobia. This book has helped me bring peace to them. The family's. My own sanity and state of mind. I can't say enough about how amazing this author is and how educated he's become in this topic. It's honest and real he doesn't sugar coat the necessary and opens your eyes and heart to acceptance of the cycle of life from so many views. Best book of his series I think

The author rightly points out we live in a death phobic culture and so, outside the palliative care, maybe only the brave and curious will read this book. I am glad I was curious enough to overcome my natural reflexive aversion to thinking about dying and very grateful that this book came into my awareness. The author is a skilled story teller and this book is indeed a poignant, thought provoking, at times sombre read, but throughout the book there is prose and poetry in its narrative and every line feels like food for the soul. The space between the lines of what is said and what is left unsaid allows the reader to sense the mystery and perhaps even the mastery of a good death.And what a breath of fresh air not to be told or cajoled or nudged into so called 'self help' advice given by someone who may never themselves have stood on the shore let alone crossed the river. My heart felt recommendation is to buy this book, read it now or keep somewhere safe until reading it feels more timely. Either way, don't leave it too long as its a life affirming book. I also have the audible version and, for me, the author's voice is soothing balm on sore ears. I wish you very good health.

This is one of those books that come your way accidentally and change your life, more precisely your dying. Yes, yes, everybody knows that they are going to die. Everybody knows it could happen in the next heartbeat, or after a period of great suffering, after the diagnosis of a terminal disease. Everybody knows it's possible that those you love, even children, could die unexpectedly. But there is knowing and knowing.Stephen Jenkinson is a very unusual man who works in what he calls 'the death trade': one of his jobs is to engage with individuals and families where death is due soon from terminal disease. He also lectures on his work, including to health professionals. He is also a farmer out in the wilds, and a man who is learning the rhythms and wisdom of the indigenous people, mostly dead, and a man who is learning to die. Dying is a human right, he says, and an obligation, an act of the individual that recognises continuity. Human life is but one tiny manifestation of Life, an individual's life tinier still. That Life is born of Death: as everything dies its remains spawn birth. A seed from a dead plant when burst open to die produces new life. And culturally, in a healthy culture, our own deaths are an essential, integral part of the continuum of Life. It is hard for us to die so we must learn to have Grief in our hearts - not when somebody dies or when we are dying, although that too, but now, when we are in the flood of life if we are. Grief and Love Jenkinson sees as inseparable. Living fully involves living each moment with grief, the reality of suffering, love and an overarching wisdom born of deep knowing of Nature.We live, Jenkinson and many others have said, in a death-phobic culture. But this is not universal, it's specific especially to North American and European culture. This culture Jenkinson describes as homeless, unrooted, forever fleeing but never to a secure home. We have no sense of an ancestral tradition stretching behind and beyond. We are orphans. I'd encourage anybody to visit Jenkinson's website orphanwisdom.com and also to watch the documentary about him and his work, 'Griefwalker' (included in amazon Prime membership).Jenkinson spends much time examining medical technology and its associated 'end of life' care. This 'care' involves reducing pain, sedation, possibly treatment for 'depression', and most of all a strong tendency to prolong life long after the body, which knows naturally when to die if not resisted, has had enough. 'More time' is a weapon used against the possibility of dying well, dying in the sense of embracing dying and grief and love.In Western culture most people face their deaths with terror. This is not some psychological ailment. It is a spiritual despair, inevitable consequence in a More culture itself terrified of death, a Disneyland culture of taking from the earth, taking, taking. Each theft makes the spiritual hole larger. When those identities of success, happiness, status, health, youth and its middle-aged facades, competence, when these are seen to be fraudulent chimera leaving only an abyss where a soul should be, no wonder there is terror. That is why to die wise we need to start our dying right now.

This is not an easy read as it looks death full in the eye and explores what life can be like if we do this instead of colluding with our "death-phobic" society in which we keep people alive just because we can. Jenkinson doesn't pull his punches and talks straight. I am getting so much from this book and how it deals with reality of death and not the pretence that so many of us collude with so much of the time.

I have struggled to make much progress with this, in part because I do not easily see where his argument is going,and therefore what he is trying to convey

This is very dense writing.You could take a paragraph from almost anywhere in the book and devote an hour's seminar to discussing & exploring it.