death Archives - Keith Shields

Life is Fragile

Perhaps now is the time to remind ourselves that life is fragile. We have all experienced a greater measure of our own bodily fragility ever since our world declared a world-wide pandemic. We realized that there are viruses that not only make us sick but can even kill us. And the virus has killed young, old, and in…

The Crucifixion

I am tempted to create a blog post by simply stringing together a series of Fleming Rutledge quotes. The words she uses are often adequate to spark the mind and generate combustion. However, I shall do more than that; I shall interact with some of her writings on the atonement rendered by the death and…

Life and Death in God’s Good Creation

God created a world in which one creature consumes another to survive. We may wish it was otherwise; we may think it would have been a better world if God had made it so that we humans could synthesize energy from the sun, but that is not the world God created. Besides which, even grass which…

The Searching Kind

“And I know if he’s here tonight, somewhere looking in on us, he would smile and be so proud that this artist is performing this song. To George who we love and will always miss, this is for you . . .” James Corden, introducing a tribute to George Michael performed by Adele on the…

Where to Now St. Peter?

“Where to Now St. Peter?” is a song that I have been listening to for about 4 decades. There is much I like about the song and its meaning continues to intrigue me. It is a song about death and what comes after death, written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John. Taupin provided the evocative…

Religious Nones and a Spiritual Remnant

Our world is becoming more secular; a disputable, but defendable statement. We are told that more people than ever have become religious nones. That is, there is an increase in the number of people who reject a belief in God, creation, spirituality, and purpose. They insist that the universe happened by chance, has no purpose,…

Live This Life (Follow-up to Terminal)

A few days ago my thoughts were focused on the fact that we are all “terminal.” Today my mind turns to the things within us that drive us to keep on living. We have likely all known someone who planned to “live a hard life, have a good time, and die young” only to be…

Terminal

“Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding, the mortality rate holds steady at 100 percent.”[1] In a culture that speaks little about death,…

Oblivion

Recently, I watched the science-fiction movie Oblivion (2013; starring Tom Cruise and directed by Joseph Kosinski). It is an entertaining movie with a good mix of action, philosophy, and romance. If anything, the writers and director may have been a little too ambitious, for one can readily see threads from several other movies embedded in…

The Cross Around My Neck

I wear a cross around my neck. I wear it underneath my shirt and most people will see no indication of the fact that I wear it unless they see the string at the back of my neck or a small wrinkle on the front of my shirt. The cross was carved out of amber…