Introduction
AS I IMAGINED THIS BOOK, I gathered all my materials into a pile, searched through old files and journals seeking prescient themes, and meditated upon presence.
One night, a guru in my lineage appeared in the clear blue sky and held out his hands as if to offer me a gift. He grinned wildly as the moon appeared between open palms, cycling from new to full to new to full to new before dissolving into its own origination.
A few days later, I learned of the Japanese word
joju, which means ever-present or unchanging, although one author preferred everlasting.
1 The pictograph for
joju is moon.
It is a koan, of course, for the moon appears differently each night and with each cyclical rotation through the seasons, even as it is a single, unchanging moon within the same sky.
Joju is commonly associated with death.
When I worked as a middle school counselor, I posted a magazine image on my office wall that depicted death dancing with birth. The archetypal figurines in caricatures of black and white circled around the other with enough intimacy to transfigure into a single symbol of yin and yang. On long afternoons I’d contemplate the glossy details, the twirling faces of hope and fear, wondering what, if anything, it had to do with the suffering that traipsed through my office each day.
One afternoon a colleague visited, only a few short weeks after her brother’s unexpected death. She glanced at the image repeatedly, trying to fight back tears. Neither of us spoke, and for a moment, I understood that life always includes death. I could find no words of comfort.
Decades later, I can still find this image within the collage of all I’ve discovered as a psychotherapist, hospice chaplain, and spiritual practitioner, for the wise ones point toward such truthful moments as portals—doorways into the entirety of all we seek. My ongoing dance with dying has changed my views of just about everything, including myself. I can no longer separate the path of dying from the spiritual path itself.
Yet, it wasn’t always this way. Rather, I spent the last thirty-five years looking under the rocks of all that makes us human, wondering what death had to do with any of it. My service as a professional was deeply rooted in
