{"id":1706,"date":"2013-10-23T14:18:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T18:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2015-06-05T16:26:38","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T20:26:38","slug":"a-walk-through-the-churchyard-toward-a-spirituality-of-christian-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=1706","title":{"rendered":"A Walk Through The Churchyard; Toward a Spirituality of Christian Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Rob Gieselmann practiced law from 1987 until he was ordained by the Episcopal Church in 1999. Since then he has served as a parish priest in Maryland, Tennessee, and California. He begins and ends his book with two dreams, which is to say that this book is deeply personal and not a detached treatment about death. The first dream was one about his father 23 years after he had died when Gieselmann was a teenager. The second dream that concludes the book is about his wife Laura, who died from complications after surgery in 2003 after ten years of marriage. He was 43.<\/p>\n

The lessons shared in this book were forged in the fires of the \u201cpure pain\u201d of grief following his wife\u2019s death. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be so hard if it hadn\u2019t been so good.\u201d Gieselmann also shares first hand stories about other deaths he has been privileged to share in the course of his ministry as a priest. The basic takeaway? \u201cPeople don\u2019t just leave when they die; they don\u2019t leave at all.\u201d That\u2019s because in some mysterious way God in Christ \u201cconquered death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel\u201d (2\u00a0Timothy 1:10). Gieselmann\u2019s book reminded me of similar memoirs of grief by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed<\/em>) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Lament for a Son<\/em>). It\u2019s a good resource for people who are experiencing the dark valley of the shadow of death.<\/p>\n

Rob Gieselman is rector of St. Stephen\u2019s Episcopal Church, Belvedere, CA.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

reviewed by\u00a0Journey with Jesus<\/a><\/em>\u00a0webzine, www.journeywithjesus.net, with founder Dan Clendenin\u2019s permission<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lessons shared in this book were forged in the fires of the \u201cpure pain\u201d of grief following his wife\u2019s death. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be so hard if it hadn\u2019t been so good.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,13],"tags":[104,139,105],"class_list":["post-1706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-community","tag-book-review","tag-death","tag-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions\/2441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}