By Kent L. Koppelman

Wrestling with the Angel addresses the human fight to deal with loss of life, demise, grief, and bereavement. The booklet comprises essays, a one-act play, a brief tale, and poetry, together with form poems, rhyming, established verse, and unfastened verse. within the one-act play, an angel of dying comes for a guy who has lived an unexamined existence and desires to provide an explanation for why he isn't ready to go away. the fast tale bargains a funny examine a guy who resists getting older through carrying on with to view himself because the younger guy he as soon as used to be. the varied genres permit for various methods of exploring those concerns, yet all are meant to interact the reader's feelings in addition to mind. The writings contain reflections and quotations addressing universal human matters with regards to our mortality and discover reactions to the lack of a enjoyed one--whether anticipated, equivalent to the loss of life of an getting older dad or mum or a person with a terminal disorder, or unforeseen, reminiscent of unintended loss of life. the ultimate chapters study how getting older reasons us to evaluate our lives and why getting ready ourselves for dying can increase the standard of our existence. it is a booklet with many extra questions than solutions, however the reader is invited to percentage within the strategy of discovering solutions. it's a booklet that calls for the reader to be ok with ambiguity, as the fact it describes is usually ambiguous--a fact that provides us with many selections yet few certainties. meant viewers: students, hospice employees, funeral domestic administrators, health facility chaplains, ministers, and others who paintings with bereavement matters; periods in dying schooling and sessions for psychological healthiness execs in loss of life and grief; basic readers who've suffered the lack of a family member.

Show description

Read or Download Wrestling with the angel : literary writings and reflections on death, dying and bereavement PDF

Best literary books

Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816

This ebook deals an unique account of the advance of literary biography within the lengthy eighteenth century and divulges other ways within which biographers probed the internal lifestyles via writers' depression. the 1st part tracks the volatile prestige of depression in biographical writing from Walton to Johnson within the context of fixing scientific and theological realizing of the situation.

The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism

This vintage account of Zoroastrianism is the main entire survey of the faith to be had. The study's sections correspond to the 2 classes of Zoroastrian greatness in its fatherland, Iran: the 1st happened round 588 BC, through the Achaemenian Empire, and the second one throughout the Empire of the Sassanians (225-652 AD), which lengthy rivaled the may well of Rome.

The Other (Vintage Contemporaries)

From the writer of the bestselling Snow Falling on Cedars, a coming-of-age novel that provides powerfully diversified visions of what it capacity to stay a superb existence and the compromises that include achievement. John William Barry and Neil Countryman shared a love of the outside, hiking usually into Washington's distant backcountry the place they'd to depend on their wits—and every one other—to live to tell the tale.

Criminal Sociology

This e-book was once switched over from its actual version to the electronic layout by means of a neighborhood of volunteers. you'll locate it at no cost on the net. buy of the Kindle variation contains instant supply. [C:\Users\Microsoft\Documents\Calibre Library]

Additional info for Wrestling with the angel : literary writings and reflections on death, dying and bereavement

Example text

There are many people I have not enjoyed escorting: remorseless criminals, greedy CEOs, psychopaths, dentists . . ADAM Okay, sure, I can see that. DEATH I was joking about the dentists. I wanted to see if you were paying attention—obviously you were not. ADAM So you can tell jokes? DEATH Well, I mostly do sight gags, but yes, sometimes I joke. But I never laugh. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH / 31 ADAM Are you serious? DEATH No, I’m Death. ADAM Ha, ha. But really, I’m interested. How about a couple of names of people you didn’t like.

Where were you? Why didn’t you come and get him? DEATH You should read more Stephen Crane. ADAM What? I mean . . I would, if I had more time. ” ADAM That’s Stephen Crane? DEATH That’s Stephen Crane. ADAM And that helps me how? DEATH Look, I’m getting tired of this. It’s time to go. ADAM Okay. Just wait a sec . . I’ll go, okay, and I’ll even go quietly, under one condition. DEATH Condition? I am Death. You can’t bargain . . ADAM Just hear me out. Please. Wouldn’t you prefer that I came along willingly?

But reincarnation would probably be my choice, mainly because I kind of know about that. I don’t know what eternal bliss is like. I know temporary bliss, but I can’t imagine stretching that out over eternity. Wouldn’t that get boring? DEATH So, given a choice, you would prefer to come back to earth. ADAM Well, as a human. I mean, I wouldn’t want to come back as a bat or a bug, you know, like a mayfly; they only live 24 hours to mate and die. They don’t even have a digestive track. Did you know that?

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.08 of 5 – based on 38 votes