‘Everything Is Ready Now’: A Near-Death Experience by RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS April 4, 2015 [America's Pre-Eminent Lutheran Theologian And Convert To Catholicism Writes...] NOTE: The following piece is excerpted from an essay, “Born Toward Dying,” that originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of First Things and became the basis for the book As I Lay Dying: Meditations upon Returning. The operation took several hours and was an unspeakable mess. The tumor had expanded to rupture the intestine; blood, fecal matter, and guts all over the place. My stomach was sliced open from the rib cage down to the pubic...