I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Perhaps mortality is the right word. And I'm not convinced that this is a morbid way of thinking. I don't know what precipated this, other than the fact that the season of Lent is a reminder of our mortality and limitations and sinfulness and of how Jesus lived with and through these constraints and has redeemed them. The other night, I read through the Book of Common Prayer liturgy regarding death, and today I came across an article regarding Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor, on hopeful dying. This is all very interesting in lieu of what we've been reading in Christianity and Postmodernism about the idea of transhuman--that is, a person who transcends one's created materiality with the use of one's reason, creating ever more 'perfect' forms of technology, forms that will enable us to achieve immortality and paradise all by our own ingenuity.

I've never realized before how fearful I actually am of death. The fact that my life is but a puff of smoke or wildflower fading after a summer-bloom. And in all this, what of our lives matters? I've never had to deal with the death of a close friend or family member, but in the experiences of death one or two connections from me, I've mourned for the tearing nature of the death of the person. There is something so potent about the fact that we are embodied beings.

One of the things that bothered me most about this transhuman business was that it denies the goodness of creation and denies that the Divine became Man and will Himself redeem this creation. (And here, gnosticism rears its ugly head in a hyper-technological form!)

Why do we rage against the physical act of dying? Obviously, yes, we want to rage against the destructive somewhat abstract category of death that sin encapsulates, and of course, physical death is an indictment of the fallenness, yet also exhibits the finite creaturehood of humanity.

Wangerin writes, "By declining this change with great passion, or receiving it with a huge natural fear, we accuse the divine providence of tyranny, and exclaim against our natural constitution, and are discontent that we are human."

Wangerin sees the process of dying as one in which one is made especially aware of one's weakness, but of Christ's Light shining remarkably brightly all the same.

"And then—recognizing the consequences of the Old Adam's liberation—I must, I must, I absolutely must believe in the mercy of God, which makes merciful the people whose mercy I do dearly need."

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From Oberman's Luther: Man Between God and the Devil,

For the just shall live by faith, and 'life' does not begin in Heaven. According to the medieval memento mori, in the midst of life we are surrounded by death. Luther's faith enabled him to vigorously turn this on its head: 'In the midst of death we are surrounded by life.'