When Breath Becomes Air

There could not have been a more stark reminder of how much constant pain he was in, all hidden by his perfectly tailored suits, his ever-present smile, his unfailing joy at the privilege of simply being alive. It took my breath away. How he found promise in life despite that pain might have been Abbu’s final lesson for me, delivered twenty-six yea

While our secular age seems to stymie pastors, surgeons like Kalanithi are awakening to the pastoral task as central and transformational. The invitation to share in the depth of human experience, to enter into the reality of death, seems to bring an overwhelming sense of transcendence within the most immanent of occupations.

The circumstances of the world shift without explanation or warning. Why do some of us meet difficulty with despair and others do so with fortitude? Who can comfort us when we are scared? Whom do we gather around us when darkness descends and the trees fall? What if a tragedy in a person’s life cannot be so plainly seen by others? What if it cannot

Nuland was a renowned surgeon-philosopher whose seminal book about mortality, How We Die, had come out when I was in high school but made it into my hands only in medical school. Few books I had read so directly and wholly