Wit

Emma Thompson is one of my favorite actresses, ever since Sense and Sensibility--her head always seems to be on so straight! And besides making me wish I were on the way to being an English professor instead of a political theory professor (two degrees??), this film reminded me once again of the need for and difficulty of cultivating a Christian response to death: for the Christian, it is both not to be avoided at all costs, and yet not to be embraced too soon; it is a significant event between life and death, and yet does not involve a loss of self. With the movie's attention to Donne's "Death be Not Proud," and various readings of the poem, it made me think of Eric Voegelin's objection to Paul's "to be absent with the body is to be present with the Lord" as a downplaying of the significance of death in a way that immanetized (count, second use here lately) the eschaton. Anyway, I'm not certain that death is a comma (although I approve of Helen Gardener, and don't even know if any of the exegesis [not exe-Jesus] is true to life, anyway). I sort of think that it's a semi-colon.

I was reading a NYTimes article lately on "slow medicine," or some people's refusal of particular medical treatments as infringing on the dignity of their remaining life without offering sufficient hope of much good. I speak highly enough of this idea, particularly after seeing Wit, which I think was an example of a rather horrible death (as far as the physical dying process went, not Emma Thompson's character's response to the death itself). In the article, however, the "slow medicine" movement also embraced euthanasia (at least self-euthanasia). These two can and must be separated--uniting them just shows how difficult the Christian tension of loving life and looking forward to what comes after really is. Admitting that you (and all of us, for that matter) are dying is absolutely different from asking for that death out of its time.