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Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul Paperback – March 17, 2015

by Stephen Jenkinson (Author), Dr. Martin Shaw (Foreword)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 574 ratings
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Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well. Die Wise is for those who will fail to live forever.
 
Dying well, Jenkinson writes, is a right and responsibility of everyone. It is not a lifestyle option. It is a moral, political, and spiritual obligation each person owes their ancestors and their heirs. Die Wise dreams such a dream, and plots such an uprising. How we die, how we care for dying people, and how we carry our dead: this work makes our capacity for a village-mindedness, or breaks it.

Table of Contents
The Ordeal of a Managed Death
Stealing Meaning from Dying
The Tyrant Hope
The Quality of Life
Yes, But Not Like This
The Work
So Who Are the Dying to You? 
Dying Facing Home
What Dying Asks of Us All
Kids
Ah, My Friend the Enemy
Previous page
  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    North Atlantic Books
  4. Publication date
    March 17, 2015
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1.15 x 9.03 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1583949739
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1583949733
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Stephen Jenkinson’s elegant and sorrow-freighted book brings prophetic insight rather than pastoral affirmations. A true story-man, Jenkinson paints image after image on the cave wall of his parchment. Die Wise is a formidable body of work, road-tested in ways most of us hope never to know about. Stay with it, hold the sorrow as the gift it is, savor in small, immense chunks. Every word is an invitation to trade fantasy for imagination. There isn’t a book like it.”
—Dr. Martin Shaw, author of Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language

About the Author

STEPHEN JENKINSON MTS MSW is an activist, teacher, author, and farmer. He has a master's degree in theology from Harvard University and a master's degree in social work from the University of Toronto. Formerly a program director at a major Canadian hospital and medical-school assistant professor, Stephen is now a sought-after workshop leader, speaker, and consultant to palliative care and hospice organizations. He is the founder of The Orphan Wisdom School in Canada and the subject of the documentary film Griefwalker.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ North Atlantic Books (March 17, 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1583949739
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1583949733
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.15 x 9.03 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 574 ratings

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Stephen Jenkinson

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
574 global ratings
Unique insight, unique guidance... for those of us who won't live forever.
5 Stars
Unique insight, unique guidance... for those of us who won't live forever.
This book does exactly what it promises. It is a manifesto describing what has happened that we have become a "death-phobic culture" as Stephen Jenkinson terms it. And it explains how we can change that, individually, one willing human at the time (starting with you the reader).If you've never thought about these things it may be a challenging read, even though there is nothing complex or obscure about what he's saying, given the extraordinarily lyrical prose in which he couches our difficulties. At times, the text evokes almost archetypal images, sometimes shocking, but always discerning and always instructive if you are willing to take on the deep learning this work invites.Stephen's use of language is eloquent, evocative, moving and powerful. Be prepared to re-read often because his writing style is his speaking written down. I find I need to listen to his talks several times, they are so rich with meaning and unexpected revelations. His speaking echoes through this written work. Don't hurry with this tome. There is no fluff or fill. Each page communicates deeply. A very rewarding experience.I found myself often reading passages aloud, to myself, but what a pleasure this work would be to read aloud to one another. This is a deeply empowering work. I'm beginning again as I finish my initial reading. This time I'll take notes.
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Top reviews from the United States

Acronym
5.0 out of 5 stars Savor each word, feeling, thought, and moment.
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2023
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This book is poetry in prose. I hope you are fortunate enough to savor each word, feeling, thought and moment. If you seek quick tips from a quickly-written mass market "self help" book you will be disappointed. This is not a bag of shallow tricks on how to feel better about your inevitable death. It's far deeper and better.

If you read with enough patience, humility and discipline to listen for wisdom's quiet whisper you may be rewarded. Paraphrasing Jenkinson, "To those...whose willingness to learn dangerous things in a troubled time grants [them] wild nights in which [to] plant [their] dreams for some coming generation's chance of a better day: May your hearths and roads be blessed, as you have blessed mine."

I suppose given the nature of human suffering, there may always be a sense of troubled times together with noble dreams for the future. In this book Jenkinson dares to dream alive long-denied truths that can heal us all if we are willing to listen, feel, and think with courage.
3 people found this helpful
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Carrie
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2024
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This is an excellent book. The author does not shy away from hard questions and big words.
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CloudChaser5
5.0 out of 5 stars A tome that opens to the many realties of Death and Life and can instruct, guide and plant quintessential action in the world!
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2015
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This book offers a real, road-tested and sacred - that is to say "real" - way of questioning, feeling, thinking about and apprenticing oneself and one's culture to Death, and therefore, also to Life. Here may be the most grounded book on Death and Dying that we have, based as it is in such lengthy and reflective actual experience with folks who have died. Poetic, soulful, and guiding, in a profoundly respectful and reflective fashion, "Die Wise" provides a view into dying, and a way of grieving by doing that most folks don't seem to know of or talk about, yet which we could each come to be close with and appreciate, and which actually seems to be part of the fabric of life and death that surrounds us every day and each night here in "the West". In reading the pages of this heartful, soul-stirring and meaningful manifesto, I find myself witnessing a possibility for befriending a host of realities that seem to have been hidden from myself and my people for most of our lives. I was thunderstruck, while listening to Stephen's stories, to realize that although I'm 44 years old, I've only witnessed one person dying and have never been present for a birth. How alive can I be under those circumstances and how can I know about how to proceed with such limited fuel and basis for existence, and what can my culture really know if it acts the way it does?! Also, how unusual are my personal circumstances - is my own experience possibly the "norm"?

The experience of receiving this awesome offering is a finding and a making of dark yet vibrant nourishment and realizing for the first time how hungry and how thirsty I have truly been, without fully grasping that until now. Worthy food and drink are offered up here, to be sure, in these mighty and very human, finely wrought pages. I hold these words with me as I seek to feed myself and my family, friends and colleagues, and to be fed by the unexpected yet ever-present heart-breaks that seem to peek or cry out around each corner. The seeds in my heart, as well as in my garden are listening and are thankful. May the new sprouts ever recall the old ones - Many Thanks to You Stephen for this Mentorship in the vital written craft of langauge!!!
12 people found this helpful
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H. McCloskey
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth it but
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2023
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The book has lots of good thought-provoking material on the subject of how our culture deals- or, more precisely, does NOT deal, with the process of dying. It’s very wordy and I find myself jumping around its many pages, but it is worth it for those who understand that death is not only inevitable but can be experienced in a much more meaningful manner than is the norm.
2 people found this helpful
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Sunny
5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic. A book everyone needs to read to prepare for death and live life.
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2022
Verified Purchase
Jenkinson is a poetic writer. To simply want to read his book in order to "get to the good stuff" or to say that "this book could be condensed to one chapter" is completely missing the point of everything. The irony is that he even addresses this modern Western desire for instant gratification and desire for complete instant knowledge. This is a book that I truly believe could better your life -- allow for introspection. As a hospice volunteer and Death Doula, I learned things from this book that I had NEVER heard in all my studies or experiences. And it makes sense. It all makes so much sense. This is a book I'll be reading again, and probably again after that, etc. This is one you'll be able to study and take notes on. So give it a chance. It took me the first 1/4 to 1/2 of the book to get used to the way he writes (he talks like this too if you've ever watched his interviews or watched the documentary about him, "Griefwalker"). You'll get the hang of it and it'll make you want to take your time to digest every word and sentence.
21 people found this helpful
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Jim
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow. Oh yes, read this book.
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2023
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Deeply instructive, insightful, moving, and eye-opening. Stephen is a generous soul to mirror to us who we are in our fear of death and dying. A must read.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Adrian Bailey
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful resource for a lifelong learning of how to die
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2020
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This is one of those books that come your way accidentally and change your life, more precisely your dying. Yes, yes, everybody knows that they are going to die. Everybody knows it could happen in the next heartbeat, or after a period of great suffering, after the diagnosis of a terminal disease. Everybody knows it's possible that those you love, even children, could die unexpectedly. But there is knowing and knowing.

Stephen Jenkinson is a very unusual man who works in what he calls 'the death trade': one of his jobs is to engage with individuals and families where death is due soon from terminal disease. He also lectures on his work, including to health professionals. He is also a farmer out in the wilds, and a man who is learning the rhythms and wisdom of the indigenous people, mostly dead, and a man who is learning to die. Dying is a human right, he says, and an obligation, an act of the individual that recognises continuity. Human life is but one tiny manifestation of Life, an individual's life tinier still. That Life is born of Death: as everything dies its remains spawn birth. A seed from a dead plant when burst open to die produces new life. And culturally, in a healthy culture, our own deaths are an essential, integral part of the continuum of Life. It is hard for us to die so we must learn to have Grief in our hearts - not when somebody dies or when we are dying, although that too, but now, when we are in the flood of life if we are. Grief and Love Jenkinson sees as inseparable. Living fully involves living each moment with grief, the reality of suffering, love and an overarching wisdom born of deep knowing of Nature.

We live, Jenkinson and many others have said, in a death-phobic culture. But this is not universal, it's specific especially to North American and European culture. This culture Jenkinson describes as homeless, unrooted, forever fleeing but never to a secure home. We have no sense of an ancestral tradition stretching behind and beyond. We are orphans. I'd encourage anybody to visit Jenkinson's website orphanwisdom.com and also to watch the documentary about him and his work, 'Griefwalker' (included in amazon Prime membership).

Jenkinson spends much time examining medical technology and its associated 'end of life' care. This 'care' involves reducing pain, sedation, possibly treatment for 'depression', and most of all a strong tendency to prolong life long after the body, which knows naturally when to die if not resisted, has had enough. 'More time' is a weapon used against the possibility of dying well, dying in the sense of embracing dying and grief and love.

In Western culture most people face their deaths with terror. This is not some psychological ailment. It is a spiritual despair, inevitable consequence in a More culture itself terrified of death, a Disneyland culture of taking from the earth, taking, taking. Each theft makes the spiritual hole larger. When those identities of success, happiness, status, health, youth and its middle-aged facades, competence, when these are seen to be fraudulent chimera leaving only an abyss where a soul should be, no wonder there is terror. That is why to die wise we need to start our dying right now.
7 people found this helpful
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Robyn
5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves 100 stars
Reviewed in Canada on August 25, 2018
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This book was an absolutely incredible read. Jenkinson calls into question so much of what we take as a given in our culture, and turns our ways of managing, understanding, and approaching death 180 degrees. He is a credible authority on the matter, having worked extensively in the field for decades, which gives his ideas much credence.

It is nearly impossible to write a summary of the work, as the ideas require a lot of unfolding in order to be fully offered and understood, but the basic premise is the observation that we currently live in a time that abhors death, and from this follows an inquiry into why this is so, what fuels it, and why it is such a destructive force that desperately needs challenging and changing.

I can't remember the last time I read a book that made me think and question so deeply, often needing to go back and read paragraphs again and again to absorb the profundity of the ideas. Speaking as a person who has dabbled in depth in various different spiritual traditions, I can say with certainty that this book offers some of the greatest wisdom and insight into what is meaningful in life, without overtly purporting to do so, that I have ever come across.

Please, please, read this book.
8 people found this helpful
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Eva Lotte
5.0 out of 5 stars All good
Reviewed in Germany on September 29, 2018
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David
5.0 out of 5 stars Dying Wise is the Twin of Loving Wise
Reviewed in Australia on July 17, 2016
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What a remarkable gift this book is. Prose, epic, poetry, metaphor, earthy meat and marrow. It whispers a shy truth that dying and grieving are not done to us but done by us. It insistently but respectfully cradles in two hands the offering of a different way of living and dying. You have to be ready for this book. It is challenging, prophetic, even iconoclastic. It could seem like excrement or fertiliser. Either way, I beg you read it, then revisit it from time to time. I think the hard won wisdom herein will germinate at the pace your heart requires it to grow.
2 people found this helpful
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Irena
5.0 out of 5 stars Really amazing book
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2022
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Got it for school
Came really fast and in good condition
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Irena
5.0 out of 5 stars Really amazing book
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2022
Got it for school
Came really fast and in good condition
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