new church life: november/december 2015
the treasure of last words
Bruce Henderson
Many people have had the experience of hearing a loved one’s last words before
dying – words sometimes precious and meaningful, sometime confusing and
nonsensical. Is there a way to find common threads that lend overall meaning
to the last words we hear – and perhaps a link to the spiritual world?
That was the theme of a program jointly sponsored by the Swedenborg
Foundation and Bryn Athyn College on September 19: The Unintelligible
Afterlife – What Deathbed Confessions Tell Us About a World Beyond. It was
attended by more than 400 people in a packed Mitchell Performing Arts
Center – many of them from outside the community. The event was also livestreamed to hundreds of viewers and still can be viewed on an archived video.
The program introduced a formal study – Research into the Communications
of the Dying – to be conducted by three of the panelists: Dr. Erica Goldblatt
Hyatt, chair of Psychology at the College; Lisa Smart, a poet and linguist who
launched The Final Words Project last year; and Dr. Raymond A. Moody,
famous for coining the term “near-death experience” in his 1975 best seller,
Life After Life.
Dr. Moody, who has written 12 book s, including his latest – The
Unintelligible Afterlife – said that “life after death is the biggest question of
human existence.” In his studies of near-death experiences he has heard a
lot of “nonsense” – and a lot of clarity – from his subjects. What sounds like
nonsense, he said, is understandable because it is outside of space and time.
And this is why we need this groundbreaking study – to try to make sense of
all the nonsense.
Dr. Moody has devoted a lot of time lately to studying nonsensical speech
– from the famous “Jabberwocky” of “T’was brillig, and the slithy toves did
gyre and gimble in the wabe” to the charming inventions of Dr. Seuss. He
spoke about this for quite a while to illustrate why we need a template for
understanding what may sound like nonsense.
Lisa Smart, for instance, said her interest in last words was stimulated
by her dying father, who came out with such things as, “I’ve never done this
before,” and “my modality is broken,” to “you were right about the angels!”
Her Final Words Project is aimed at analyzing communications during the
last six weeks of life, and hopefully making the whole process of dying less
mysterious and frightening.
Dr. Hyatt is a natural partner. She is excited because no one has done such
a study before. She described the scholarly framework of how it will work, and
the critical aspect of linking it with the nearby Holy Redeemer Health System
Institutional Review Board.
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