Fathered by God by John Eldredge

Eldredge, John. Fathered by God. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009.

Fathered by God presents again material previously published in The Way of the Wild Heart. It’s a map of the masculine journey.

Finding that I’ve writing the flowery metaphor “map of the masculine journey,” let me launch directly into a rant. Sometimes Eldredge’s writing annoys me. He writes too much in phrases when complete sentences are within his grasp. His outdoorsy examples miss me as often as they connect. For a guy into a lot of manly activity, he can come across as very touchy-feely.

In spite of this, I’ve read a half-dozen of Eldredge’s books. He talks directly about the difficulties of walking with God in a world bent on taking out those who undertake it. It’s stuff I deal with as a Christian, even if I don’t always like they way he writes about it.

The message of Fathered by God, in tough language, is, “Grow up. You need it and the people you love need it from you. Growing up is hard. You need help, especially from God.” That is where the map comes in.



The maturity of a man comes in stages, beginning in boyhood and ideally leading to sagacity in old age. In between, a man needs to be an adventurous cowboy, a dutiful warrior, a lover (of God in every case and of a woman, too, for most men), and a king of some sort of realm. These terms are mostly metaphorical. Few men are literal cowboys, but young men need challenges and hard work. Fewer will be literal kings, but every man is made to be a leader of something and hold dominion over some part of the earth.

At each stage of a man’s life, there are many opportunities for the enemy, the world or other people to take him out. This is exacerbated by the loss of the man-to-man and generation-to-generation connections that once served to help a man experience, mature, and succeed in each stage. Eldredge sees these networks of men helping men as important and encourages men to take there places in one, both to receive and give support.

Eldredge’s encouraging message is that even if a man has be damaged at some stage and hasn’t grown up the way he need to, it’s not to late to do it. The ultimate Father, God Himself, is willing and able to lead His sons into maturity. Whatever wounds a man received, God can heal. Whatever a man missed, God can supply. The masculine journey can begin or resume now.

John Eldredge also wrote
Epic
The Sacred Romance (with Brian Curtis)
Walking with God
The Way of the Wild Heart

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller
No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul Coughlin

Stories for a Man’s Heart by Al and Alice Gray

Scott Pilgrim’s Progress

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Writ. Michael Bacall. Dir. Edgar Wright. With Michael Cera. Universal, 2010.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a cool movie. It has cool music. It has super-cool, video game-inspired special effects. It has nerdy-cool actors like Michael Cera. It’s based on the series of cool graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley.


Scott is on a pilgrimage—his name is even Pilgrim, in case it wasn’t clear. Like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, Scott is on a journey from childishness to maturity. Bunyan’s work is an allegory for the Christian life. This film is secular with a heavy dose of fantasy.

Scott’s immaturity is signaled at the beginning of the movie by his announcement that he is dating a high-school girl. Though he is 22, he is spending his time with a 17-year-old girl who hasn’t even kissed a boy. He even shows her his childhood home, though none of his family lives there anymore.

Bunyan’s Christian begins his journey when he feels the great burden he is under (his sin). Scott gets started when he sees Ramona Flowers in a dream and falls in love. Christian travels with a series of guides and sometimes-unreliable companions. Ramona becomes Scott’s companion, too, though she is more inspiration than guide.

The sojourning Christian overcomes a number of obstacles on his to the Celestial City. Bunyan’s geography represents thing that can derail seekers and Christians on their way to maturity in Christ. Scott must battle Ramona’s seven evil exes. They seem to represent the worst aspects of his personality such as childishness, pride, jealousy and manipulation. What seems to be his struggle to prove his worthiness to date Ramona becomes is battle to move from overlong boyhood to responsible manhood.

Scott Pilgrim differs from other journey stories in that it borrows structures from video games. This is more than just special effects. When a video game enthusiast sees Scott get an extra life after one of his battles, they expect it to come into play again later in the story. I think it is a very cool way of cool the way it plays out. I might not make immediate sense to a non-gamer. Video games are mastered by repetition, where a player repeats a level until he overcomes it or his avatar dies. In life, we don’t have get to repeat periods of defeat with new insight, though we often face variations on the same problem until we learn to deal with it a better way. The game-style story gives Scott a do-over in the face of his defeat, but like we would like life to be, he plays it differently and becomes a better person because of it.

If you’re interested in this film, you may also be interested in
American Splendor (Film)
Maus by Art Spiegelman

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Eggerichs, Emerson. Love and Respect. Nashville: Integrity, 2004.

When I first heard about this book a few years ago, it was misrepresented a little. There was a lot of discussion about the concept that wives should give their husbands unconditional respect. This was a novel idea, which may be why it got most of the attention, and many women met it with confusion and suspicion.

The book has just as much to say to husbands, and it directs them to give unconditional love to their wives. In fact, as the title implies, love and respect go hand in hand.



The basic premise is that women value love and men value respect. This leads them to have very different perspectives. In a marriage, these differing perspectives can cause serious misunderstanding that spin out of control.

Eggerichs refers to this situation as the crazy cycle. Trying to get love from their husbands, women do things that seem disrespectful to men. Trying to get respect from their wives, men do things that seem unloving to their wives. Without live, wives react without respect. Without respect, husbands act without live. Unless one of the spouses steps up to try something different, this cycle accelerates, damaging the marriage.

That leads to the alternative, which Eggerichs calls the energizing cycle. A wife’s respect motivates her husband’s love. A husband’s love motivates his wife’s respect. I doesn’t matter which spouse starts, but someone has to start even though it can be difficult. Eggerichs' confidence that this will work is in his assumption that each spouse has good will. It not a spouse’s intent to be disrespectful or unloving, they’re just trying a misguided strategy to get the respect or love they desire. When one spouse makes the effort to treat the other respectfully or lovingly, the other will be won over and respond with love or respect. It is an application to marriage of Zig Ziglar’s axiom that you can get what you want by helping others get what they want. A couple that makes a concerted effort to treat each other this way can keep themselves energized and spend a lot less time on the crazy cycle.

In the life of a Christian, there is a relationship that is even more important than the marriage. Our relationship with God is the basis of the rewarded cycle. Regardless of how our spouse reacts, when we treat them with love and respect, we are being loving, respectful and obedient to God. God, who is looking to give eternal rewards to his children for good works, takes pleasure in this. (Eggerichs’ isn’t saying we earn salvation through any kind of good work because that is the free gift of God in Christ and something we could never get on our own merits.) This life of obedience can lead to a freedom, maturity and relationship with God that is joyful and valuable even for those who can draw their spouses onto the energizing cycle.

Most of the chapters are devoted to the energizing cycle and how wives can show respect to their husbands and husbands can show respect to their wives. Eggerichs uses helpful anagrams. Each of these chapters ends with a short list of practical ways to show love or respect to a spouse. The appendices also include ways to remind ourselves to be loving or respectful and to ask for the love or respect we need.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Maltz, Maxwell.  Creative Living for Today.  1967.  New York: Pocket Books, 1973.

Maxwell Maltz is known for his self-help books, especially Psycho-Cybernetics.  He got into the field because of observations he made as a plastic surgeon.  He found that the change in appearance he created brought about a transformation in some, freeing them to be happy, engaged people.  Others were just as depressed and disappointed after the surgery as before.  The difference, he decided, was self-image.

In Creative Living for Today, Maltz encourage people to have a positive, realistic self-image.  He says life should be lively: creative, interesting, engaging, adventurous.  For too many, life is dull, disconnected, and fearful.  We can choose which kind of life we lead, and it is largely a matter of how we think about ourselves.

Maltz intends the book to be practical inspiration for living the good life.  In it, he offers advice on how to practically improve your self-image and your life.

Goals are very important to Maltz. Large and small, long-term and daily, goals give us something to move toward.  Goals and self-image have an effect on each other.  To pursue a goal, we must be able to image we can achieve it.  Achieving challenging, realistic goals strengthens our self-image as people who can succeed.  In addition, activity and productivity is pleasurable in itself.  Endeavor to enjoy what you do.

Engagement is another major issue for the author.  To withdraw from life, and especially to isolate yourself from other people, is to separate yourself from pleasure.  Relationships with people are some of the greatest things we can enjoy.  Admittedly, life and relationships can be difficult, but that is something we all face.  Maltz argues that engagement is good, even necessary, and if we see ourselves as capable of living well and having good relationships even in the face of difficulties, which he says is true, then our self-image will help us live it.

Maltz doesn’t present a world where we can have perfection if we just think right.  Everybody gets hurt; we all have emotional scars.  Maturity is learning to accept this imperfect world and living creatively in it.  We must occasionally create some mental space for ourselves to be refreshed so we can engage life with energy, learn to forgive ourselves and others, and constantly tend our self-image.

Maltz illustrates his points with many stories.  Most of these come from his own life, sometimes his dealings with patients, but often drawing on other experiences.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

The Velveteen Principles by Toni Raiten-D’Antonio

Google

Have a New You by Friday by Kevin Leman

Leman, Kevin. Have a New You by Friday: How to Accept Yourself, Boost Your Confidence and Change Your Life in 5 Days. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2010.



By “new you”, Leman doesn’t mean a completely different person. Part if his plan is for you to accept yourself. He does mean a happier more successful you, which is probably more in line with what you really want.

The book is organized into a chapter for every day of the weekday. Leman’s style is light, so you probably can read a chapter a day with no problem. If you thoughtfully complete the exercises in each chapter, it will may a little more time. Some are simple, but as the week progresses, deeper thinking is called for.

In broad terms, Leman calls for you to know and accept yourself, recognize the lies you tell yourself and live with a new perspective. Much of the book addresses self-knowledge.

Leman addresses several areas of self-knowledge. First is temperament. He uses the classical humors (choric, melancholy, phlegmatic, and sanguine), though he humorously compares them to dog breeds. Next, he addresses way birth order effects personality. Birth order is one of Leman’s specialties. Midweek, he explores early childhood memories and the rulebooks we’ve written unawares based on these memories. I found this to be one of the most difficult chapters, but in some ways, I think it is one of the meatiest. The final aspect of self-knowledge is your love language. By understanding the things that make you feel loved, you can ask for what you need. You can also discover they ways the people close to you feel loved and begin to improve your relationship with them.

By the time we’re adults, our personality is set. Leman isn’t trying to give you an entirely new personality. Accept that you have certain strengths and weaknesses and begin using that knowledge to build a happier life. The truth can set you free to make new decisions that lead to new outcomes instead of taking the same paths that have always lead to frustration.

One of the things you can change is you’re rulebook. These are concepts of how the world works we formed as children. Being children, i.e. ignorant and immature, we formed some wrong ideas that can be driving our behavior even in adulthood. As adults, we can take a look at those rules a see if they are true and if they are helping us live the life we want. With the knowledge and maturity we have as adults, we can begin to counter wrong and unproductive rules (lies we tell ourselves) and develop new rules. Your rulebook won’t change in an instant, but you can train yourself to approach things from a new perspective instead of reacting unthinkingly.

In the Friday chapter, Leman lays out the program for implementing the new you. A couple of the best points are to take baby steps and give yourself room to fail. By the time you’ve been through the first four days, you’ll see that you come to be where you are by many steps over a long time. Getting to a new you will be similarly incremental, and old ways are bound to reassert themselves periodically. Leman encourages you to give yourself some grace, forgive yourself for stumbling, and take the next little step to get moving in a good direction again.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Little Shifts by Suzanna Beth Stinnet
One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man: Or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of School. 1944. New York: HarperOne, 2000.

I didn’t expect of find apologist C. S. Lewis discussing the Tao. He used it as a term to describe natural law or traditional values, which he defended in the three lectures collected in The Abolition of Man.

This is a hard book for me to write about, though it is short. Lewis wrote as a thoughtful and educated man to an audience he assumed could follow him. I don’t find it easy to summarize his arguments and do them justice, though I will try.

Lewis began by criticizing a trend in education that debunks emotion and sentiment in favor of reason. The particular English composition he used as an example rightly showed students how to see through the shallow sentimentality and factual falseness of bad writing, but failed to show the merits of good writing, worthy sentiments, or deeper truth.

The product of such an education is people without hearts. Instead of mastering reason, students were equipped with shallow reasonableness. By inoculating students against one kind of propaganda, the authors of the text made them more vulnerable to other propaganda.

For fruitful education, Lewis offers the Tao, teaching people to recognize and esteem the inherent value of things. As he puts it, “The right defence against false sentiments is just sentiments.”

Those who reject traditional values, even if not entirely conscious of it as may be the case of the textbook authors, are proposing new values. However, the tools they use to cut down the old work just as well on the new. They must either stick to the idea that values are cultural vestiges or conventions that have roots in unwanted sentiment instead of desirable reason, and lay the groundwork for future reasoners and reformers to overthrow the new values, or appeal to inherent, self-evident values. On this latter basis, the Tao has much history and endurance.


These ideas have real social consequence. This book was first published in 1944, so the Nazi regime in Germany was very much on Lewis’ mind, as well as then-rising Communism. Though the pseudoscience that the Nazis used to justify their racist policies has been debunked, and even the Soviet Union has crumbled, the idea that a more scientific and rational governance and policy will perfect, or at least greatly improve, human society is alive an well.

As we master nature, even human nature, we also give people who acquire and control that knowledge and technology mastery over other people. Successive generations of such people will grow in mastery over others and, raised with no heart or inherently true values, they will have nothing by which to govern themselves except their own appetites and desires. George Orwell’s vision would cease to be merely an imaginative projection of the excesses of socialism and become something close to prophecy.

Lewis doesn’t see reason and sentiment as being natural enemies, only that some have tried to position one against the other. His vision would be people educated to have within them both powerful reason and powerful sentiments, especially ethical sentiments.

My own experience makes this an attractive vision to me. As a child, I had experienced strong emotions, especially anger, that threatened to overwhelm me because I lacked maturity and self-control. As I got a little older, though still a child, I clamped down on my emotions and tried to comport myself according to reason a much as possible; Mr. Spock from Star Trek was my model. This became a problem, too, in that my life and relationships lacked fullness as I deprived myself and others of something important in my connections. Now that I am a man, and I am coming to see what the fullness of that can be, I long to have both a powerful mind and strong heart. To have one without the other sets one up for many falls, but to have them together is a synergistic combination that empowers one to have greater appreciation for and effectiveness in life.

C.S. Lewis also wrote:
The Great Divorce

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together is the fourth volume of a six-volume work by Bryan Lee O’Malley. In reviewing other volumes of the series, I’ve mentioned that the story is a pilgrimage. In this volume, things start moving.

Nothing signals a figurative move like an actual move. Scott’s friend and bandmate, Kim, moves from her apartment into a house with some friends. One of these friends has sound editing equipment, so Scott’s band, Sex Bob-omb, moves from playing clubs to recording an album. Eventually, Scott is forced to move because the lease is up on the apartment he shares with Wallace.

The important moves in the series, though, are Scott’s stumbling from an extended adolescence toward adulthood. His internal challenges are represented by external challenges. In order to have a place to go when he leaves the apartment he shares with Wallace, he proposes to move in with Ramona. One can imagine how disastrous this might be in the state of their relationship at the start of the book; Scott must make an emotional move to Ramona and responsibility first.

This emotional move is achieved in several stages. Scott practices self-control by resisting the temptation for an easy, breezy summer fling with a woman he knew from school who has a crush on him. He takes on responsibility by getting his first job as a dishwasher at age 23.

His other conflicts are represented or resolved in combat. It wouldn’t be Scott Pilgrim without cool fight scenes. His relationship with Ramona is haunted by his not actually broken off relationship with Knives. Knives’ vengeful father hunts down and attacks Scott. In addition, another of Ramona’s evil exes arrives. It’s neat that he survives combat with Mr. Chau and defeats Roxie. The powerful actions he takes are to confess his love to Ramona, accept the baggage of her past, and treat Mr. Chau (an through him Knive’s) with respect.

Self-control, responsibility, love, acceptance, and respect are a decent set of virtues for a young man to practice. Scott is not perfect, but his journey isn’t to perfection, it’s to maturity.

Bryan Lee O’Malley also wrote

Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life 

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Maus by Art Spiegelman 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Film)

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

O’Malley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. Portland, OR: Oni Press, 2007.

It's Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Depression and anxiety can be tough to handle and treat. Drugs may treat symptoms, but they do not cure depression and they typically do not work for long or require ever increasing doses. Talk based therapies can be helpful, but sometime it take a long time to get a helpful breakthrough.

Some forms of treatment aim to be more active. One such is accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy, or AEDP. This form of therapy is the basis of the methods described by therapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel in It’s Not Always Depression.

In a nutshell, AEDP sees maladaptive behaviors (defenses) and stressful emotions such as anxiety (inhibitory emotions) as ways to suppress potent core emotions. This can be useful to help us get along in social situations, maintain relationships and keep ourselves from being carried away by strong emotions. This is especially true when we are children and may not have the maturity or power to choose another path. However, we can become stuck in this behavior, never dealing properly with our core emotions, and our inhibitory emotions and defenses can become maladaptive, keeping us from the life and relationships we want and need.

Hendel organizes these items into an equilateral triangle setting on point. Defenses sit at the upper left corner, inhibitory emotions at the upper right, and core emotions at the bottom. Beneath the core emotions is your authentic self, which Hendel calls an openhearted state, in which one feels calm, confident and clear-headed.

Working the triangle is getting in touch with core emotions by finding how our defenses and inhibitory emotions are protecting us from them and the consequences of expressing them. Hendel draws examples from her therapy practice, but the fact that this is a book for a popular audience suggests that this is a technique that people could use on their own as well as in a more formal therapeutic setting. When we acknowledge our core emotions, name them, let ourselves feel them (they will pass) and express them in safe ways (sometimes through fantasy), they lose their potency and move on. By doing this repeatedly we learn that we can handle our emotions in ways that are safe and constructive; we have alternatives to our old defenses and inhibitory emotions and we can let them go. From here we can relax into an openhearted state.

“[W]e cannot  think our way through a core emotion; it must be experienced viscerally to be processed,” Hilary Jacobs Hendel, It’s Not Always Depression

Because defenses and inhibitory emotions protect us from core emotions, it can be difficult to know what we are feeling. Emotions are felt in the body, and Hendel describes was of slowing down to scan the body, assess our sensations and use this information to uncover our core emotions.

I’m not a therapist, but I can see the benefit of the framework. It gives someone a way to identify what they are doing and feeling. It can give one words to describe what one is experiencing and a process for exploring that experience. Its ultimate aim is to retrain the brain so one can let go of behaviors that are no longer helpful an embrace new ways of coping that allow for one to feel emotions and at the same time have the calm and clear mind to deal with situations constructively.

It is hard to do justice to these ideas in a few paragraphs. If you are looking for a way to deal with depression and anxiety, this book may be helpful. Even so, if your issues are severe, you should not abandon professional help from a physician or therapist. You may need a guide to help you through the process. There is no shame in that. We all need help when we are learning something new.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Hendel, Hilary Jacobs. It’s Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2018.

First Corinthians

First Corinthians. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Corinth was a major commercial center for the Greeks. The church there, like churches elsewhere are too often, was fractious. To settle disputes, leaders of the Corinthian church sent a delegation to the missionary who established their church, Paul.

Sometimes you might get a sense of exasperation in reading Paul’s letter. He had hoped they would continue in the things he had taught them, growing in Christ. Instead, they were acting like children. In some ways, they were worse than children.

Paul had a lot to say to the Corinthian believers about how Christians should conduct themselves, especially in relation to their brothers in Christ. The general rule was this: love.

Love, and the corollary attributes of humility and generosity, was to be the governing principle in the church. There are many particulars Paul deals with in terms of the disputes going on in Corinth like partisanship, lawsuits , marriage, eating meat from sacrifices to idols, women in the church, and spiritual gifts. In every case, the advice was to be thoughtful and accommodating of others. It is better to inconvenience yourself for a while for the sake of a new or weak brother, drawing them into maturity of faith through love, than to assert you prerogatives and potentially hurt or alienate others, causing them to fall away or into error.

The love theme culminates in Chapter 13. This description of love is one of the most famous passages of the Bible, popular at weddings, and well worth reading.

A secondary theme of the letter is liberty. The gift of grace Christians receive from God includes great liberty. Godly character in imitation of Jesus, whose death paid for sins and whose perfect rightness was attributed to His people, was to characterize life. Christians don’t earn love, favor and forgiveness from God by their adherence to laws, customs and ceremonies (as if any of us could live perfectly), but they received His gift of forgiveness and new life. It didn’t matter how people dressed or what they ate because they had freedom in grace.

Much was permitted, but not everything was fruitful. Paul encouraged people not to flaunt their liberty, but to let love rule.

Though Christians have liberty, there remain things that are immoral and not to be practiced in the church. Liberty is not lawlessness and forgiveness is not license to sin with impunity. The church was to stand against immorality, especially among its members, and encourage each other in doing good. Paul addresses moral and doctrinal issues, especially in the later chapters of his letter.



Like other letters in the Bible, you’ll find things like you might put in your own communication: greetings, introductions, plans, schedules, instructions and other matters. In addition to instruction and wisdom, this letter opens a little window into history of the early church and the people who were involved in it.

Paul also wrote
Romans

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Acts
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Genesis
The Gospels
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Good Dog. Stay. by Anna Quindlen

Quindlen, Anna. Good Dog. Stay. New York: Random House, 2007.

It started with the cover. I’m not sure it is a picture of Beau, the Labrador retriever Quindlen memorializes in this essay, but I guess it could be. It resembled Lucky, my Lab mix, with glossy black fur and the hoary muzzle of maturity. My wife bought the book and read it quickly; I got around to it weeks later.

In the six years we’ve had him, Lucky and I have both acquired quite a few white hairs on our chins. My wife jokes that the dog and I a growing to look alike. He is still cute in fashion of dogs. I hope I am cute, too, but in the way the husbands are attractive to their wives.

Quindlen writes about Beau, and dogs, and the relationship between people and dogs. Like many pets, Beau lived happily, simply and briefly. He wasn’t like another child, but he was part of the family, a solid presence in their home. It was hard for the family to put him down when he was to feeble to continue.

That gets more to the heart of the essay: mortality. The duration of a dog’s life is only a fraction of most of ours, but it is long enough for us to share many years and experiences with a dog and become very attached to one. The death of a dog can feel like the ending of a phase of our lives and a foreshadowing of our own passing.


I’ve lost pets to death, too. I remember them with bittersweet longing, particularly childhood pets that I feel I should have treated better. I thought about them as I read about Beau.

The family and friends who have died are a different matter. That is almost too weighty to contemplate. The loss of affection is sad; the loss of love is painful. The could-haves are much more costly. The bitterness of loss is sweetened with some of these people by the hope we share in Christ. It’s not the hope of a vague spiritual reunion in an immaterial heaven, but a hope for resurrection, where those I loved as a spirit and a body, the way we were made, I will know as a spirit and a body again, but ageless and eternal.

Quindlen doesn’t address that issue in this essay. She ends it at death, with hope that she has learned something about living and dying well from her relationship with Beau.