What piece of art, music, literature or other art form helps you understand death?  How does it help your conception?  Do you see any connections with the ways the ancient people we talked about this week approached death?  Why or why not?

I grew up in a very conservative, Christian house hold.  The Bible and Evangelical Christianity has always had a huge influence in how I was raised and taught to understand death.  All though I do not know the Bible inside and out, my many mornings in Sunday school did give me some understanding of the Christian worldview of death and the afterlife. 

In the Bible, particularly the new testament, the life story of Jesus Christ is told in which he is crucified and later rises from the dead.  The Bible outlines rules on how we too can conquer death by living eternally in Heaven. 

By growing up on this doctrine, my understanding of death was similar, I found, to the one of the ancient Egyptians we have learned about in class.  In my understanding, a person is judged by God and then sent either to Hell or Heaven. As I have gotten older, my belief about death has become a little more ambiguous. I do still believe in the afterlife but I am not too sure what that will really look like—probably a lot different than the felt clouds and rainbows that decorated my Sunday school classroom to be like Heaven.

I was having a hard time thinking about art forms that helped me understand death. I think this may be because I do not really think about death that often.  I did, however remember one of my favorite songs called “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie.  This song speaks about a person and their loved one who has passed on into the “dark”. 

“Love of mine, some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark” 

video link to song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nog3J4t3BfE

The singer then speaks about how although their loved one has passed on, they soon will be able to be together again in this “darkness”.  I felt this idea of death was similar to the older worldviews in which there was no differentiation between Heaven and Hell.  This idea of afterlife is so different from what I was raised to understand. I am really interested to learn other ways worldviews understand dying since I have been confined to one idea for so long.