A Second Birthday

by William Stringfellow

Overview

""To endure pain is to suffer anticipation of death, in both mind and body. It must be acknowledged, confronted, suffered, and survived on its own terms, as it were, as the very aggression of death against life. What must be faced and felt, in the uttermost of a person's being, is that assault of the power of death feigning to be sovereign over life--over the particular life of a particular person and over all of existence throughout all of history. ""It is, so to speak, only then and there--where there is no equivocation or escape possible from the fullness of death's vigor and brutality, when a person is exposed to absolute vulnerability--that life can be beheld and welcomed as the gift which life is."" William Stringfellow almost died. In the spring of 1968, he contracted a baffling and apparently hopeless disease that horribly wasted his body before a last-ditch operation brought about a dramatic cure. This is Stringfellow's own account of that ordeal of pain and of the fundamental beliefs that sustained him in his agony and gave him the courage to undergo the dangerous surgery that saved his life. His vivid description of that experience, told without emotion or cant, is both startling and strengthening. His story is a personal testimony to the relevance of faith and love in the mystery of healing, and to the gift of life itself that few of us take time to recognize.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597523240
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	08/01/2005
Series:	William Stringfellow Library
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	6.08(w) x 8.58(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

William Stringfellow was a practicing attorney and a prominent Episcopalian layman who frequently contributed to legal and theological journals. After his graduation from Harvard Law School, he practiced some years in the East Harlem neighborhood in New York City. He was a visiting lecturer at several law schools and lectured at theological seminaries across the country. Stringfellow authored more than a dozen books, including 'A Private and Public Faith,' 'My People is the Enemy,' 'Count It All Joy,' and 'Instead of Death.'

Table of Contents

I	Ordeal	13
	The immigration	17
	The health care scandals	23
	Therapy and theology	35
	The ambiguity of pain	45
	A false work ethic	55
	Pain as work	61
II	Succor	69
	The somber options	73
	An adolescent decision	79
	Decision and judgment	85
	Decision as vocational event	91
	An ordinary and common experience	97
	The reality of prayer	99
III	Recall	111
	A matter of providence?	117
	Hails and farewells	125
	A political trial	129
	A black ghetto	135
	An ecclesiastical event	143
	An apostolic succession?	149
IV	Hope	157
	Absolution	161
	An ecumenical sacrament	167
	Vigil	173
	A gift of healing	181
	Thorns in the flesh	185
	The rumor of miracles	195