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    Home » Celebrating life and time while looking death straight in the eye
    Andrea Houchard

    Celebrating life and time while looking death straight in the eye

    January 2, 20132 Comments5 Mins Read
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    By Andrea Houchard
    (January 2, 2013)

    The New Year is a celebration of time that each of us adds to our lives. It is a time to reflect on how we live, but that is something that Sedona people do anyway.

    For the most part, people in Sedona have made a conscious choice about where and how to live, and recognize the relationship between the two. A new year brings new plans to a community of creative, mindful people. This is the time of year when we think of renewal and new possibility, so the topic of death might seem like a downer. Surprisingly, it can be just the reverse.

    That is what we found out at a Sedona Salon this fall when an intimate group gathered to talk about living with death. Death is a serious topic, and the discussion began with a tone that was sober and somber. But after a few candid accounts of “a brush with fate” and “family loss” (peppered, of course, with Dorothy Parker and Woody Allen jokes), we had a room full of eager interlocutors and nothing smacked of the morbid or melancholy. Acknowledging the inevitability of death made people excited about life.

    It also got some folks pretty excited about the afterlife, or whether there is one. We do know that life as we live it comes to an end. But what next? To put it mildly, this is a question about which people disagree.

    The fact that we have no definitive means to settle the question often fails to diminish conviction. This may be because while the views have not been uniform, there have been strong beliefs about what happens after death for millennia and all over the world.

    Spectacular funerary monuments indicate the power of these beliefs. This summer I was truly awed by the enormous scope and intricate detail of the Terra Cotta Army that was part of the massive tomb for Qin Shi Huang around 210 bc near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. The pyramids prepared for Egyptian Pharos invest similarly staggering resources in a tomb. These are monuments not just of architecture, but of the convicted mind. 

    Different religious traditions have different accounts about what happens when we die.  The incompatibility of competing accounts does not seem to compromise the confidence of the devout. Atheists are no less resolute about the veracity of their views. Public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens insist that a dead body leaves just one final carbon footprint and nothing further endures.

    How do they know? How does anyone know? It is difficult and in some cases impossible to test the various hypotheses. What happens when we die remains a mystery. We might wonder why we cannot let the question rest. One answer is that it is our nature to want to know.

    Even if we cannot be certain about what happens after we die, it is perfectly normal for us to wonder about it. Our curiosity about death and the eternal can be seen as the maximal extension of our curiosity about life and what happens from year to year.

    The survival of our species depends on wondering about what will happen next and getting the answer right.  We have been hardwired for forecasting since prehistoric times.

    Locally we find evidence of this at the V-V petroglyph site, where the Sinagua preserved calendric information to guide and forecast their New Years.

    The accuracy of predictive power and the rise of civilization go hand in hand. We predict things on many levels, and this includes personal planning.

    People plan, and plans tend to payoff. Retirement savings provide security. Exercise and a good diet engender health. Kind, thoughtful people win friends.

    But as Burns’ verse that Steinbeck made famous reminds us, even the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. Think housing bubble, 2008.

    Even still, a plan gone awry is no reason to forego planning. It does remind us, though, of the important distinction between the probable and the certain. We yearn for certainty in an uncertain world. But there is one thing we can count on:  death.   

    Death demarcates the end of a particular Earthly existence. What you do between here and there is the rest of your life.  This fact was constantly before the mind of Stoic philosophers.

    And while philosophy professors on average are every bit as sexy as Russell Crowe, they seldom make Stoic philosophy as captivating as he did in the movie Gladiator. Crowe’s character Maximus remembers the insight of Marcus Aurelius, “Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back.”  

    What we saw at the Sedona Salon is that when people looked death in the eye, they really did smile. Openly acknowledging the mortality we all face gave people an opportunity to talk to each other about what they care about most, how they choose to live, and why. The finitude of life was not a source of sadness. It was a frame for planning what to do next, and what kind of attitude to have while doing it.

    While there are concepts of the unbounded and eternal, the great majority of things we encounter in the world begin, and then end.  We observe cycles—life, and death. Looking honestly at the cycle of our own life can give us the courage and the clarity to plan each new year.

    Happy new year! And happy planning!

    Andrea Houchard is a Sedona resident and director of Philosophy in the Public Interest at Northern Arizona University. Sedona Salons are Philosophy in the Public Interest programs that give people an opportunity to think about happiness, death, courage, and other issues of enduring human interest.

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    2 Comments

    1. Sandford Bach on January 2, 2013 10:36 pm

      Interesting article.

      I have chosen to shirk all responsibilities associated with my death and leave the mess for whoever survives me.

      I’ve made no plans and never wonder what’s waiting. Couldn’t care less if there is an afterlife or a heaven or hell; punishment or compensation for a life well suffered.

      Living takes all my time. Got no time for dying.I’d rather do it later.

      I’ve seen many people stop moving and buried. Something for sure happens to the meat but what happens to you is another matter.

      Why worry now? The present demands attention.

      The immortal forget to die.

    2. Bill Eich on January 8, 2013 4:48 pm

      I have thought about this subject many many times, especially as I get closer to it.
      I always kind of laugh internally when I hear people talk about the hereafter and the idea of being reunited with their friends and spouses who have already gone before them but as a Christian I hardly think that is what the hereafter will be like. I feel we will be reunited with our heavenly father, one on one, together in eternity and we will not continue life as it was here on earth in any way.

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    Paid Political Announcement by Samaire For Mayor

     THE MOMENT IS UPON US

    Dear Sedona,

    The moment is upon us. The time for a united effort to shift the focus back to our community is now.

    The ability to thrive in our community, our environment, our workforce, and the tourist industry, is entirely possible because we have all the resources needed for success.

    Still, we need a council that isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions, that makes decisions based on data and facts, and through discussion, rather than moving and voting in group unison as they so regularly do.

    This is my home. I have been a part of the Sedona community for 28 years. I witnessed the road debacle, the lack of planning, the city circumventing the local businesses ability to thrive, while making choices to expand the local government and be in direct competition with private industry.

    I am a unique candidate because unlike the incumbents, I don’t believe the government should expand in size, nor in operations, nor would I attempt to micromanage every aspect of our community.

    City government should stay in its lane and allow the competitive market of local private industry to prosper. And it should defend our community from corporate takeover and infiltration of our town.

    I do not agree that we should sign onto International Building Codes and regulations by signing Sedona up to the ICC. It is imperative that we remain a sweet, rural community.

    Where are the arts? Where is this organic thriving element that we allege to be animated by. Where is our culture? Where is our community?

    The discord between the decision making process and the desires of the community have never been more clear. It has been nearly a decade in the making.

    It is time for a new era of energy to take charge. An energy that is reflective in the ability to succeed rather than be trapped in out of date consciousness.

    It has been a great honor meeting with each of you. I hear your concerns over the insane and out of control spending and I echo them. A budget of $105,000,000 in a town of 9700 residents is completely unacceptable. A parking structure (that looks like a shoe box) originally slated to cost 11 million, now projected to cost 18 million, is incomprehensible. Especially, considering there is no intention of charging for parking.

    For those who are concerned that I lack the political experience within our established system- that is precisely what Sedona needs… Not another politician, but instead a person who understands people, who listens to the voices within the community, and who will act in service on their behalf with accountability, for the highest good of Sedona. What I am not, will prove to be an asset as I navigate the entrenched bureaucracy with a fresh perspective. Business as usual, is over.

    Creative solutions require new energy.

    Every decision that is made by our local government, must contemplate Sedona first.

    • Does this decision benefit the residents?
    • Does this decision benefit the local businesses?
    • Does this decision actually help the environment?
    • Will this decision sustain benefit in the future, or will it bring more problems?

    What we have now is a city government that expands to 165 employees for 9700 residents. Palm Desert has 53,000 residents and 119 city employees. Majority of our city department heads are not even in town. I find this problematic.

    Efforts towards championing in and courting new solutions for our medical needs are imperative. We are losing our doctors. We must encourage competition with other facilities rather than be held hostage by NAH, who clearly have their own set of dysfunctions.

    We must remember that so many move to Sedona for its beauty, hiking, and small town charm. Bigger, faster, and more concrete does not, in broad strokes, fit the ethos of Sedona.

    The old world must remain strong here in balance, as that is what visitors want to experience. Too many have noted that Sedona has lost its edge and charm.

    As Mayor I will preserve the rural charm of our community, and push back against the urbanization that is planned for Sedona.

    As mayor I will make it a priority to create opportunities to support our youth.  After school healthy, enriching programs should be created for our kids, and available to the Sedona workforce regardless of residency and regardless of school they belong to.

    As Mayor, I will create an agenda to deliberately embody the consciousness of our collective needs here, allowing private industry to meet the needs of our community rather than bigger government.

    I hope to have your vote on Aug 2nd. I am excited and have the energy to take on this leadership role with new eyes, community perspective, and the thoughtful consciousness that reflects all ages of the human spectrum.

    Thank you deeply for your consideration.

    Sincerely,

    Samaire Armstrong


    Heads or Tails
    By Tommy Acosta
    Let’s face it. I love conspiracy theories. The more far-out the better. Yup. I’m one of those. Looking at the Trump raid fiasco there can only be two theories that I see fit perfectly into the scenario that’s being weaved for public consumption. The first is that what is happening is actually being engineered by the forces that want Trump to return to the White House. Just like with the Russia-Russia thing, what is going to happen after all the hoopla,Trump will be found completely innocent just like before and he will be loved even more by his fans and followers. Those who tried to put him down will be chagrinned while those who supported him politically will be exalted. Republicans will be revived, and they will go out and vote in a new Congress and Trump will rule once again. Then there is the other side of the coin. Read more→
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