Contemplative in the Mud

Dead – What Does This Word Mean?

1–2 minutes

Benjamin Embley

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3 comments on Dead – What Does This Word Mean?

After not hearing from Pier Giorgio Frassati for some time, a friend jokingly sent him a letter asking, “Are you dead?” The blessed replied in his own letter with a kind of seriousness that I feel a lot of sympathy for. Sometimes, as I’m torn and pushed this way and that, navigating through this world, I feel the same.Pier Giorgio said this:

pier-giorgio-portraitDead – what does this word mean? If you are giving dead its usual meaning, then I am still alive (unless my senses deceive me). But if we’re talking about the word in its true essence, then sadly not only am I dead, but already resuscitated a number of times only – alas! to die again.

He continues:

I would like to set off along the straight and narrow path, but at every step I stumble and fall; for this reason I beg you to pray for me as much as you can so that one day, whenever Divine providence wills, I will reach the end of that wearisome but straight path.

Indeed he did, just a few months later. But how intense the suffering and the trials of the viator can be…

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Benjamin Embley

With backgrounds in engineering (BSc PhD) and philosophy (MA), Ben has lived and worked in England, France, and Thailand and is now back home as a settler in the unceded traditional territory of the Wabanaki peoples in Canada. He is a Laudato Si’ Animator and currently studying an MTS Peace & Justice in Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

3 responses to “Dead – What Does This Word Mean?”

  1. My Small Surrenders Avatar
    My Small Surrenders

    This is an very insightful response.
    Death does come to us in small increments, never as suddenly as most people believe.

    Reply
  2. Gratitude and Creativity: Death Comes | My Small Surrenders Avatar
    Gratitude and Creativity: Death Comes | My Small Surrenders

    […] What I found wasn’t as morbid or bleak as one might expect. Not that I didn’t find some heartbreaking posts, but I also found inspirational and philosophical writing from many members of the community. One of the posts I read was about an excerpt of a letter from Pier Giorgio Frassati a beatified early twentieth century Italian Catholic social activist. The letter was in response to a friend who had not heard from him for a long while, who wrote to him asking if he was dead. In his response Frassati wrote, “Dead – what does this word mean?” […]

    Reply
  3. My Small Surrenders Avatar
    My Small Surrenders

    After reading your post in the early morning hours I went looking for more information on Pier Giorgio Frassati. Between the story about his life and what you wrote, I was inspired to write some poetry.
    Thank you.
    Gratitude & Creativity: Death Comes http://wp.me/p5JzjS-mg

    Reply

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