This short book is sub-titled "Meditations Upon Returning". It is written by former Lutheran minister now Catholic convert-priest Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus is the editor of the interfaith Journal First Things, and a prolific author and commentator. I read it during Lent.
Neuhaus spends the first part of the book musing on life and death, and then writes about his own experience of illness, misdiagnosis, colon cancer, botched surgery, ICU, and almost dying in 1995. He offers some cogent reflections on the experience, based on his own faith and clinging to that faith.
On page 112, Neuhaus describes the strange experience/vision he had a few days after leaving ICU. Rather then describing it as a "near death" experience, he says "I am inclined to think of it as a ‘near life’ experience."
…All of a sudden I was jerked into an utterly lucid state of awareness. … By the drapery were two "presences." I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that … And then the presences – one or both of them, I do not know – spoke. This I heard clearly. Not in an ordinary voice, for I cannot remember anything about the voice. But the message was beyond mistaking: "Everything is ready now."
That was it. …
Neuhaus goes on to discuss this event in the context of his whole experience of sickness, near-death and rocovery. He draws no concrete conclusions, beyond affirming that it was a real occurrence and he drew some comfort from it.
The book is a quick read – less then 170 pages long, and is a good account of one man’s confrontation with mortality and what he learned from it. Neuhaus weaves a great deal of Christian reflection, philosophy, poetry, and literature into his narrative. It is much more then just an analysis of the strange experience recounted above.
So, the interesting reflection of a Christian intellectual believer facing his own possible death around the age of 60.
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