Life's Living Toward Dying

Vigen Guroian is Professor of Religious Studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He tends a large perennial and vegetable garden with his wife, June, in Culpeper, Virginia. His books include Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening, Life's Living toward Dying (both Eerdmans), and Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination (Oxford).

Booklist
"Readers may find Guroian's weaving of a variety of literary allusions into his evocation of theological tradition instructive as they construct their own responses to death and Dr. Kevorkian."

Catholic News Service
"Thoughtful book."

Edmund D. Pellegrino, M. D. (Georgetown University Medical Center)
"This book reasserts the Christian tradition of a 'good death,' one that cannot include euthanasia or assisted suicide. Believers will be reminded of the richness of Christian teaching about dying and salvation; nonbelievers, of the dangers of disconnecting compassion from its roots in the Christian gospel of love."

The Christian Century
"Continuing his work in liturgy and ethics, Guroian demonstrates how the Christian tradition—richly embodied in liturgical worship—provides a cogent alternative to the contemporary 'culture of death' prophetically depicted in Walker Percy's Thanatos Syndrome and exemplified in the words and deeds of Jack Kevorkian. Through an engaging analysis of literature and contemporary culture, Guroian traces the dynamics of our simultaneous aversion to and obsession with death."