Picture someone you love in an Intensive Care Unit. You see extraordinary amounts of technology applied to the patient. You take part in an intense, whispered conversation with fam-ily members, doctors, nurses, and clergy. You speak of heroic measures, pain and suffering, living wills, advanced directives, the end of life, the quality of life, the possibility of an afterlife, and a good death.

"A good death does honor to a whole life." So wrote Petrarch in 1348, when his beloved Laura died. Thereby the Renais-sance humanist contributed a term to our contemporary discussions of end-of-life issues.

Doctors, nurses, hospice workers, and other health care pro-fessionals, Jews, Christians, and Muslims -- all offer a variety of perspectives on end-of-life issues. In a two-year project, Medicine, Mortality, and Morality, the ICJS will bring these sometimes disparate groups together to explore a variety of crucial issues:

• How can members of these religious and medical communities learn from each other?



• What resources do the three Abrahamic faiths bring
  to pain and suffering, the physical act of dying, the afterlife, and the work of grief?



• What happens when medicine and religion intersect?

A grant of $17,500 from the Foundation for Spirituality and Medicine and matching ICJS funds will finance the project's first year. ICJS associate scholar John Roberts chairs the plan-ning committee of physicians, hospice personnel, hospital chaplains, clergy, and ICJS staff. This group is developing a curriculum, assembling resources, and identifying speakers from the three Abrahamic traditions, the medical community, and hospice networks. The committee will craft an approach to end-of-life issues that respects the distinctive character of our faith traditions and the challenges of medical practice.

The committee's immediate task is organizing a regional con-ference to be held on the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at the Conference Center at Sheppard Pratt. The targeted audience will be approximately 150 participants including physicians and other health care professionals, hos-pice workers, and clergy. Persons interested in attending or in suggesting others to be invited should contact the ICJS at 410-523-7227.

Beyond the April conference the ICJS Medicine, Mortality, and Morality project will sponsor four colloquia and four congrega-tional conversations to investigate in greater detail the issues that emerge from the conference. A study guide for congrega-tional use will make the results available to a wider audience.

What about our friend Petrarch? He lived to be seventy. The old scholar was found dead, slumped over his desk, his quill in his hand and Laura still in his heart. Did the man who coined the term have a good death himself?

Here is the wisdom of two ICJS trustees and Medicine, Mortality, and Morality Planning Committee members, Gerry Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Stella Maris, and Peter Culman, a hospice volunteer.

"Is there such a thing as a good death? There are no succinct answers to such a question. Different people will have differ-ent responses. Probable responses include such things as a faith base which holds life after death, being alert and pain-free 'til the very end, being at home surrounded by loved ones, an inner peace coming from having dealt with letting go, saying goodbye, forgiving and being forgiven, saying thank you, coming to terms with the reality of one's whole life with its joys and sorrows, dreams fulfilled and unfulfilled, mistakes and things of which one is proud. Getting to that point is the work of dying. This work is not easy."

No, the work of the Medicine, Mortality, and Morality project will not be easy, but like all ICJS projects, it will be important, challenging, and stimulating.