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Pendle Hill Publications
On Retiring to Kendal (and Beyond); A Literary Excursion
On Retiring to Kendal (and Beyond); A Literary Excursion
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Is death an unmitigated calamity?
Upon moving into a retirement community like Kendal, one obviously thinks about such things, since such a community--although at first resembling a marvelously stimulating educational cruise boat, or a luxurious residential hotel, or an undergraduate college--is after all your final home, a place from which, sooner or later, you will leave in a box, ready for burial or cremation.
Why have Quakers been so active in creating such communities? And why do so many Quakers consider residence in a Kendal or similar community to be a natural, desirable alternative to remaining in their individual homes? Perhaps it is because their friends and relatives are already there, or because Friends do not wish to burden their children with old-age cares. I hope, however, that the primary reason is something else, whether or not it be consciously articulated--namely, Friends' emphasis on the corporate nature of religious life and therefore the corporate nature of life in general. If worship is corporate as well as private, if business decisions are determined by a sense of the entire Meeting rather than by a preponderance of individual votes, then presumably aging and dying, too, is properly corporate.
Upon moving into a retirement community like Kendal, one obviously thinks about such things, since such a community--although at first resembling a marvelously stimulating educational cruise boat, or a luxurious residential hotel, or an undergraduate college--is after all your final home, a place from which, sooner or later, you will leave in a box, ready for burial or cremation.
Why have Quakers been so active in creating such communities? And why do so many Quakers consider residence in a Kendal or similar community to be a natural, desirable alternative to remaining in their individual homes? Perhaps it is because their friends and relatives are already there, or because Friends do not wish to burden their children with old-age cares. I hope, however, that the primary reason is something else, whether or not it be consciously articulated--namely, Friends' emphasis on the corporate nature of religious life and therefore the corporate nature of life in general. If worship is corporate as well as private, if business decisions are determined by a sense of the entire Meeting rather than by a preponderance of individual votes, then presumably aging and dying, too, is properly corporate.
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