In this unique and engaging book, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die, musicians David Crowder and Mike Hogan remind readers that a life lived to the fullest inevitably includes pain and grief. Even more, that kind of life requires dying to self—which then frees us to experience a greater joy: living as part of a community of faith.
There are countless ways to think about death and grief, but musicians David Crowder and Mike Hogan have discovered one that resonates deeply: bluegrass music. Bluegrass was born from pain and yet, despite its dismal roots, has hope at its core. And hope is what we most desperately crave when our souls are shattered by loss. In this unique and engaging book, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die, Crowder and Hogan remind readers that a life lived to the fullest inevitably includes pain and grief. Even more, that kind of life requires dying to self—which then frees us to experience a greater joy: living as part of a community of faith. Crowder and Hogan explore the complex relationship between life, death, grief, and community through personal experience, Christian theology, the science of pain, and warm, inspiring, and often hilarious insights—all viewed through the lens of the music of America’s bluegrass roots. They assure us that death is not the ultimate calamity, it’s just the beginning. And we need each other to get through it gloriously.
Description:
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. And heaven, if we’re to believe what was proposed by a man two thousand years ago, is a kingdom coming and a kingdom here and now; something for the present, not reserved entirely for the ever after. Right now we exist somewhere between here and there, and bluegrass carries the high lonesome song of our condition in its soul. None of us are getting out of here alive, but we will conclude that death is not the ultimate calamity.”
–David Crowder and Mike Hogan
When grief shatters our world and the pain of death and loss consumes us, we not only yearn for comfort, we want answers. Musicians David Crowder and Mike Hogan help us find those answers—and give us a song of hope in the meantime.
In this unique book filled with warm, thought-provoking, and often hilarious insights, Crowder and Hogan reveal how bluegrass music can reach our souls like nothing else. Bluegrass was born from pain but has hope at its core; it gives us a song that assures us that death does not win, it is the beginning.
