In a sermon for Easter...
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In a sermon for Easter, William Willimon, the former chapel dean at Duke University, referred to a campus tragedy. Amy, a student, had died in a freak bus accident. Many students, particularly her friends and dorm-mates were grief-stricken. The university brought in a therapist who invited the students to gather and express together their grief and anger. The therapist's assessment, after listening to them, was positive: "You're doing exactly what you should be doing, you're grieving. You're progressing quite nicely. You're adjusting to the fact of death." To this gesture, Willimon comments that therapy is often little more than an attempt to help the living adjust to dying. Death tells everyone to grow up and become adults. Be realistic, it says. Gather your posies, snatch life's pleasures, but always remember that death stands all about whispering, "Save the last dance for me." (Jack Roeda, "Before and After: While It Was Still Dark," in Perspectives: A Journal Of Reformed Faith, April 2004, p. 8)
