Episode 25: The Preciousness of Death

One Heart One Mind

Thomas McConkie

Meditation, Spirituality, Mindfulness, Contemplation, Psychology, Buddhism, Development, Thomasmcconkie, Religion & Spirituality

5 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You’ve heard something like this before—without death, we could never know the preciousness of life. When a loved one falls ill, suddenly our relationship with them is imbued with an entirely new quality. But what happens when the loved one who falls ill isn’t human? What if it’s a lake whose life we mourn? In this season finale, Thomas shares about a close friend of his who initiated him in death, and Great Salt Lake, who is now in dangerous decline. He invites us all to reconsider what personhood is, and what it might mean to open our hearts to the lands that sustain us.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.
0:07.0	I'm your host Thomas Mekonki. Thanks so much for listening.
0:11.0	This episode is season six finale.
0:15.0	I feel a lot of, I feel a lot right now in my heart.
0:29.6	I have especially loved recording in this space at the Harvard Studios and the team here has just been amazing. Just love to PJ and Jeff War here right now and to the rest of the team who's helped so much in producing an amazing season.
0:38.1	I just feel a lot of gratitude to you all.
0:44.2	What can we do for a season finale?
0:46.1	I wanted to bring something special to you.
0:47.7	I hope you find this special.
0:49.8	I want to talk about the preciousness of death, but in a particular context, starting with a friend of mine, her name's Mary Pitt.
1:01.2	I met Mary when it was probably 10 years ago. We were at a funeral of all places, you know, in Davis County, Utah.
1:14.7	And we just hit it off immediately. We just started laughing together, making jokes about the funeral potatoes, probably inappropriate jokes. I can't
1:19.1	remember exactly what, but we just hit it off. And it's like the second we laid eyes on each other,
1:23.7	we knew we were bonded, we knew we were going to be friends. And what was really
1:27.8	special, there's so many special things about that friendship to me, but what was really unique about
1:32.3	is Mary was a peer. She's almost my exact same age. And she was very sick at that time. And before
1:39.2	we'd been friends for, you know, more than a couple days. I learned that her condition was such that
1:46.0	she and her doctors and her family had a good sense that she could probably die, you know,
1:53.6	any time in the next few years. So I had this experience in my young 30s of meeting this person
1:59.9	who just, you know, I felt
2:01.2	like I'd always been friends with her.
2:03.6	And our friendship has only deepened over that time.
	...

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