Product Description
What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living is a spiritual approach to health care that teaches the reader about values, hope, and faith through actual experiences of terminally ill persons. This unique approach to health care teaches the living how to deal with grief and the bereavement process through faith and prayer. Priests, pastors, chaplains, and psychotherapists will learn how to treat parishioners or patients with the values the dying leave behind, allowing part of their deceased loved one’s beliefs and teachings to guide them through the grieving process. In the end, you will also become aware of your spiritual self while helping others heal and renew their soul.

While What the Dying Teach Us concentrates on the values you can learn from the terminally ill, the author includes his own views on:

• how our tears manifest the depth into which our relationship with a deceased loved one travels
• how dimensions of reality lead us to appreciate the present
• experiencing events in life without judgment or comparison
• the role faith may play in health care as a healer of the terminally ill
• how the strength of prayer can drastically change lives
  
  What the Dying Teach Us celebrates the spirit loved ones leave behind and teaches you how to surrender into an eternal relationship with them. Furthermore, because of this experience, you will be able to find a new and deeper realization of your own existence. What the Dying Teach Us will help you spiritually connect with yourself as well as with deceased loved ones that continue to live on through faith.

Customer Reviews (6)

A Must Read book for anyone!
Sam knows how to write a great book.Not just about what it sounds like, death and dying.He has lots of great stories and personal experiences that lift you up and definitely get you thinking in a good way!Get it, you won't be disappointed!And if you do know someone who has family that are approaching the hospice stage, buy them a copy or share your own.
I plan to read it again slower this time, a definite keeper!!!

probably not for the agnostic
i am interested in insight into life and the experience of dying.partly because i have a heart condition and had open-heart surgery two years ago.i was intrigued by the title of this book and wanted to learn from the experiences of others in the hospice experience.i think i will just volunteer instead.i don't mean to offend anyone with this review, but i wish the Reverend had gone into more detail of the interactions with those in hospice.for me the book offers too much of himself and not enough of their experiences beyond what seem to be brief visits that he has with them.i would be more interested i think in the stories of full-time hospice caregivers.for me i had a problem with the spiritual messages that the Reverend saw in everything.i find those experiences highly subjective and would have preferred merely human stories to the inferences of the eternal and spiritual that the Reverend saw in everything.i guess i should have read the reviews more clearly and exercised more caution before picking this up to read.dying isn't necessarily a religious experience, although i'm sure that this statement will not compute for many who are religious.dying is however a very human experience that we will all share and it is important for us to be in the moments that we have with each other, especially in these necessarily final moments.peace be with you.

Getting to the heart of hospice care!
From an experienced hospice minister comes a revelation of the heart of the Hospice mission. This book conveys the inner experience of hospice care, death and dying and questions about the meaning of life, death and the Spirit. Read along and get back in touch with what is really going on during the most intimate moments of the dying process as well as lifeitself.

Truely a Spiritually Inspired Writing
At the time I discovered Sam Olivers Book, I was enrolled in a chaplaincy program at a local hospital.I believed the content would be most helpful in my own ministry.Little did I realize that this book would be my ownsource of comfort, strength and guidance only a few short months later whenI was thrown into an unwanted, unexpected divorce.

I have discovered thatthe pain of a divorce can be almost as devastating as the death of a lovedone.This book served as a guide through that darkness.The comfort andspiritual direction I derived has contributed greatly in my healing processand the continuation of my ministry.

Thank you Sam Oliver for yourcontribution to my life.

"Walking the Walk"
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This book should be on the bookshelf in every Hospice office, every Chaplain's office and in every minister's library regardless of denomination. I heartily recommend it for anyone who works with Hospice,with hospital patients, with the elderly, or with bereavedpersons.

Reverend Sam Oliver's book is not a book by a preacher forpreachers.It is a book written by an exceptional man who humbly shareshis walk with those who are dying, as well as the lessons of life that hehas gleaned from his relationships with those persons.

I have read manybooks on Hospice care, death & dying, and bereavement in the past twoyears.Many of them are excellent books from which I've learned much. However, I cannot remember one that caused so many light bulbs to explodewithin my soul.From page to page I found myself saying, "Aha!"as the light bulbs of cognition and recognition flashed.

In a 12-monthperiod of time, our only son died of a cerebral hemorrhage, my father diedof cancer and my mother-in-law died of cancer.Our son's death was twoyears ago, my mother-in-law's death just a year ago.

In that 12-monthperiod of time, I wish that the ministers who surrounded us had SamOliver's wisdom and warmth.While our son was in the ER, the hospitalchaplain came into the waiting room, introduced himself and then said,"Let's hold hands and have a prayer."He was going by thebook..by rote. He didn't know what else to do.

In Sam Oliver's book, onelearns that there is nothing "routine" about death, dying, andbereavement. It is his ability to walk with the dying and listen to whothey are, where they are, what they need, that sets Sam apart from manyother chaplains.

As a chapter leader for The Compassionate Friends(support group for bereaved parents, siblings & grandparents), I haveheard many of our bereaved parents say, "We always thought our pastorwas great, until our son/daughter died.He doesn't have a clue."Whydoesn't he have a clue?Because unlike Sam Oliver, he hasn't taken thetime to listen to what people are saying when they are scared, when theyare angry, when they are in pain.

Instead of buying yourpastor/minister/chaplain a tin of cookies for the holiday season, purchasethis book for him/her.It will not only prepare him/her for an active rolein a community of need, but it will also help him/her to better understandhow much his or her own life can be enhanced via the lessons of life thatare taught by the masters of this life: those who die well. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Text for undergrad course
I have used this text in my undergrad course for the last couple of years.It is written in real language with lots of practical suggestions for elementary and middle school teachers.I wish I had had textbooks like this when I was in college!

Enough to stimulate many good lesson plans
I like this book and will use it with a class on arts methods in education.It divides the arts in four main domains:visual arts, theatre/drama, music, and dance, and each chapter is chock full of ways to use these domains in the K-12 classroom.At the end, they feature three lengthy integrated units that center around a single work or theme, kind of like Leonard Bernstein's arts-based curriculum.One of them is a unit on jazz study, which I thought was a great idea.A few of the explanations are tedious, some statements needed a few citations to hold up, and the anticipation guides could be answered correctly by anyone with a brain, but these are small quibbles.Mainly, it's a good book to get teachers thinking about the wide range of arts-based activities they can promote even without special training.

Good if you know nothing about teaching with the arts
This book is set up as a text book, with anticipatory guides, questions and activities for the reader to do. I was expecting a book with too many ideas, but instead this book is for those that aren't familiar with the arts or how to incorporate them into the classroom. There are better books out there, and this is more of a stroking of the authors' worth than anything else. I was very disappointed with this book.
If you have no clues about what art is or how to use it in your lessons, than this book is for you, but if you have any background using art at all, ignore this book. ... Read more