As seventy some million Baby Boomers come to the end of life on the earth, the question of how to end one’s days with peace, grace and dignity is squarely before us. It is a question that I believe can only be answered by reflecting on how to walk a soulful path at the end of life’s journey.

In our high-tech world, we live daily with the miracle of technology. You can carry around with you a smart phone that has a Kindle library of books with far more literature than was available to anyone in the Middle Ages. And yet the greatest miracle of all is the soul.

Talking about the soul can be amazingly simple and practical as we face loneliness and isolation at the end of life. Yes, I may have all the great adult toys ,but who will be soulfully with me as my life’s journey draws to a close? How does my life wrap up with a sense of meaning. ? Those questions reveal the face of the soul for us today.

The modern hospice movement has brought so much comfort at the end of life with its medical focus on palliative care. We have “hit it out of the ballpark” in confronting medical concerns that keep the dying from being physically comfortable.

And yet I see every day as a hospice chaplain a giant black hole of suffering in the life of the dying. Who is a soul friend when there are far more days of life behind me than ahead of me?

So many are finding out the hard way that friends on social media are not up to the task of being true “soul friends”. Nothing takes the place of a hug or a caring conversation over a cup of tea at the kitchen table.

The psychologist Carl Jung had the intriguing insight that life divides into two halves. The first half is about getting. Like getting an education and all the adult toys. But this only goes so far.

Joseph Campbell described a midlife crisis as getting to the top of the ladder and finding out that the ladder is against the wrong wall.

The second half of life is a profound soulful shift of the ladder, and it is about accepting life as a precious gift. It’s about accepting a body that has declined through the years.

Modern consumerism offers us endless help with the “getting” “ part of life but we are all but abandoned with the “accepting” second part of life.

We need to create in the modern hospice movement a new class of end-of-life caregivers that I call “Caregivers of the Soul.” These are folks that have received education in soul care, and are from all walks of life and all spiritual traditions. An appropriate certification for this hospice soulful caregiver is “ Hospice Spiritual Master”.