檳榔嶼

- Cultures of domination court death.
- Erich Fromm asked : why we prefer love of death to love of life, why "the human race prefers necrophilia to biophilia".
  - our cultural failure to fully embrace the reality hat love gives life meaning.
- Thomas Merton :
  - "Psychoanalysis has taught us something about the death wish that pervades the modern world. We discover our affluent society to be profoundly addicted to the love of death.... In such a society, though much may officially be said about human values, whenever there is, in fact, a choice between the living and the dead, between men and money, or men and power, or men and bombs, the choice will always be for death, for death is the end of the goal of life."
  - "If we become obsessed with the idea of death hiding and waiting for us in ambush, we are not making death more real but life less real. Our life is divided against itself. It becomes a tug of war between the love and the fear of itself. Death then operates in the midst of life, not as the end of life, but rather, as the fear of life."
- The worship of death is a central component of patriarchal thinking, whether expressed by women or men.
  - Matthew Fox : "Western civilization has preferred love of death to love of life to the very extent that its religious traditions have preferred redemption to creation, sin to ecstasy, and individual introspection to cosmic awareness and appreciation."
    - "WIthout this solid grounding in creation's powers we become bored, violent people. We become necrophiliacs in love with death and the powers and principalities of death."
- The more we watch spectacles of meaningless death, of random violence and cruelty, the more afraid we become in our daily lives.
  - We cannot embrace the stranger with love for we fear the stranger. We believe the stranger is a messnger of death who wants our life.
  - Even though we are more likely to be hurt by someone we know than a stranger, our fear is directed toward the unknown and the unfamiliar.
- White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that is would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action.
  - Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor.
  - Viewers are encouraged feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake.
- Protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat - This is what the worship of death looks like.
- Loving makes it possible for us to change our worship of death to a celebration of life.
  - We are so much more able to embrace the loss of intimate loved ones and friends when we know that we have given our all - when we have shared with them that mutual recognition and belonging in love which death can never change or take away.
  - Each day I am grateful for having known a love that enables me to embrace death with no fear of incompleteness or lack, with no sense of irredeemable regret. 
  - Love empowers us to live fully and die well.
- We would be lucky if we felt love's power all our days and not just when those days are ending.
- "Life is not promised" - to live so that we would be without regret.
  - Death is among us. To see if always and only as a negative subject is to lose sight of its power to enhance every moment.
- We are often unable to speak about our need to love and be loved because we fear our words would be interpreted as signs of weakness or failure, so are we rarely able to share our thoughts about death and dying.
- We are taught to feel shame about grief that lingers. Like a stain on our clothes, it marks us as flawed, imperfect. 
  - Love knows no shame. To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.
- In a culture like ours, where few of us seek to know perfect love, grief is often overshadowed by regret. We regret things left unsaid, things left unreconciled. Now and then when I find myself forgetting to celebrate life, unmindful of the way embracing death can heighten and enhance the way I interact with the world, I take time to think about whether I would be at peace knowing that I left someone without saying what's in my heart, that I left with harsh words. I try daily to learn to leave folks as though we might never be meeting again. It is a ways to live consciously.
- "To return on the present is to be in contact with life. Life can be found only in the present moment, because 'the past no longer is' and 'the future has not yet come'. ... Our appointment with life is in the present moment. The place of our appointment is right here, in this very place"
  - Living in a culture that is always encouraging us to plan for the future, it is no easy task to develop the capacity "to be here now".
  - When we live fully in the present, when we acknowledge that death is always with us and not just there at the moment when we breathe our last breath, we are not devastated by events over which we have no control - losing a job, rejection by someone we hoped to connect with, the loss of a longtime friend or companion.
  - "Everything we seek can only be found in the present" that "to abandon the present in order to look for things in the future is to throw away the substance and hold onto the shadow."
- Love empowers us to surrender. We do not need to have endless anxiety and worry about whether we will fulfill our goals or plans. Death is always there to remind us that our plans are transitory. By learning to love, we learn to accept change. Without change, we cannot grow. Our will to grow in spirit and truth is how we stand before life and death, ready to choose life.