From the Introduction
 
In February 2008 I received my death sentence. The warning bell had rung a year and a half before. After living in cancer’s shadow for a surprisingly uneventful span following the November 2006 removal of my esophagus (together, we hoped, with the disease that had riddled it), my luck ran out. The cancer had returned with a vengeance. Stage IV esophageal cancer, the medical terrain I now occupy, is incurable. Not without reason (though supplementing my doctor’s cautious reckoning with imprudent visits to the Internet), slightly more than a year ago I was measuring the life remaining to me, if not in coffee spoons, certainly not in years.
 
With time now on the march, I determined to write one final book, Love & Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow. Returning to Beacon Press, where publisher Helene Atwan graciously welcomed me back into the fold, I dispatched the book swiftly, for both practical and spiritual reasons—notably to avoid getting caught facing two deadlines at once. Beacon rushed the book, beautifully produced, into print by June, an act of robust skill and true kindness for which I shall always be grateful.
 
Admittedly, I wrote Love & Death in a slightly enhanced state. Not yet accustomed to the steroids my oncologist was doling out to help me tolerate an intensive weekly chemotherapy regimen, I could easily go forty hours a stretch without sleeping. As I told my congregation, I hadn’t been so high since the late ’60s.
 
For a time, my journey toward death sailed along as anticipated. By May, I had lost twenty-five pounds. Death hovered closer every day, or certainly seemed to. Bu...