1st Edition

What the Dying Teach Us Lessons on Living

By Samuel L Oliver, April Ford Copyright 1998
    144 Pages
    by Routledge

    148 Pages
    by Routledge

    What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living is a spiritual approach to health care that teaches the reader about values, hope, and faith through actual experiences of terminally ill persons. This unique approach to health care teaches the living how to deal with grief and the bereavement process through faith and prayer. Priests, pastors, chaplains, and psychotherapists will learn how to treat parishioners or patients with the values the dying leave behind, allowing part of their deceased loved one’s beliefs and teachings to guide them through the grieving process. In the end, you will also become aware of your spiritual self while helping others heal and renew their soul.

    While What the Dying Teach Us concentrates on the values you can learn from the terminally ill, the author includes his own views on:

    • how our tears manifest the depth into which our relationship with a deceased loved one travels
    • how dimensions of reality lead us to appreciate the present
    • experiencing events in life without judgment or comparison
    • the role faith may play in health care as a healer of the terminally ill
    • how the strength of prayer can drastically change lives

      What the Dying Teach Us celebrates the spirit loved ones leave behind and teaches you how to surrender into an eternal relationship with them. Furthermore, because of this experience, you will be able to find a new and deeper realization of your own existence. What the Dying Teach Us will help you spiritually connect with yourself as well as with deceased loved ones that continue to live on through faith.

    Contents Foreword
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
    • Part One: Lessons on Healing, Hope, and Peace
    • A Moment of Grace
    • Healing Moments
    • I’ll Be with You
    • Lessons of Hope from the Dying
    • A Transformed Life
    • Where the Soul Never Dies
    • Eternal Love
    • A Peace That Passes All Understanding
    • Tears of Honor
    • Part Two: Lessons on Spirituality
    • Words of God
    • The Freeing Power of Questions
    • Perceptions of Reality and Death
    • Keeping the Magic Alive
    • Lamaze Lessons for the Soul
    • Creating Spiritual Awareness
    • Painting Pictures We Cannot See
    • Soul Retrieval
    • Part Three: Evaluative Lessons on Living
    • Spiritual Ethics in the Medical Setting
    • Healing Relationships
    • Facing the Unknown: A Structured Experience
    • Reflections
    • Bibliography
    • Index

    Biography

    Reverend Doctor Samuel Lee Oliver is the Hospice Care Center Chaplain at the Hospice of Visiting Nurse Service in Akron, Ohio. Reverend Oliver is a member and contributing writer with the Editorial Review Board for Healing Ministry Journal and a board member of the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care. He has written numerous articles that have appeared in Enlightenments, Healing Ministry Journal, Explorer Magazine, and in various poetry anthologies. Reverend Oliver began teaching and speaking about providing spiritual care to the dying five years ago and continues to speak at public engagements on the national and international levels.