When What They Say Shuts You Down
Alive and Mortal
I've surveyed a lot of what is out there online in terms of handholds and support for grieving people when they're encountering family, friends, acquaintances, ministers even, who are saying insensitive cliches to them. And there is some decent material out there - but so far to this moment - I have not seen anything that's going to actually handle this kind of conversation. So that's why I feel like it's worth my time to document this for you.
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Death Is All Around - No Need To Fake It
Alive and Mortal
The question I ask you - how many deaths do you recall from your childhood? From your young adulthood? How many people within your larger social circles may have passed away within your community? Because we do not always notice that death is all around, it is happening all the time. We are often face-blind and tone-deaf to death. But it is happening all the time, everywhere.
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Rainer Maria Rilke on the Need of Praise in Grief
Alive and Mortal
This podcast episode is one in the series I am calling Conversations With Wisdom. This series is where I pay a fictional visit to various sages and wise ancestors. I imagine a sit down conversation between myself and a poet, artist, writer, great thinker - and I focus on death, grief and impermanence. I use their writings or work as an anchor for this imaginative conversation.
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My First Three Encounters With Death
Alive and Mortal
In Season 1 Episode 2, Kim shares the first three experiences she had with death, all before the age of 10. This is part of the “getting to know me” series so you know us well.
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Locked Out
Alive and Mortal
Kim shares an experience one evening durning the first winter after her life partner died and she lost visitation rights to her three children. This is part of the “getting to know me” series so you know us well.
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Where Culture Fails the Dying and The Grieving, it Fails Us All
Alive and Mortal
Those of us that discuss death and grief frequently - we observe that the dominant western culture is often treacherous when death and grief occurs. After thousands of conversations with terminal and grieving people, I see the patterns and wish to gently but persistently call them out here. To me, this is a matter of social justice for the health of humankind.
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The Widows Gates, Part Two
Alive and Mortal
The term “widow” and “widower” is code. It stands for the level of personal disruption and hardship a death creates, as well as the measure of the bond and heartache. Yet there are those who have made commitments to one another without any state endorsed ceremony and license. Here, I explore the later forms of the word "widowed" and explore how most of our beliefs around the words are fairly recent developments and I make a case for expanding our vocabulary.
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The Widows Gates, Part One
Alive and Mortal
Committed couples without a state endorsed ceremony and license may experience the terms "widow" and "widower" are off limits - a gated community, walled by two pieces of paper – a wedding license and a death certificate. Here, I explore the earliest forms of the word "widowed" and how most of our beliefs around these words are recent developments, making a case for expanding our vocabulary.
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Memorial Homily
Alive and Mortal
This is one of my recorded homilies during a memorial service for a young man who died, leaving a 9 year-old daughter behind. So, I address her, in the audience, as well as the adults.
info_outlineThis podcast episode is one in the series I am calling Conversations With Wisdom. This series is where I pay a fictional visit to various sages and wise ancestors. I imagine a sit down conversation between myself and a poet, artist, writer, great thinker - and I focus on death, grief and impermanence. I use their writings or work as an anchor for this imaginative conversation.
This is a device I am using as a means of discussing death, grief, impermanence and culture. I personally have found strength by going to wisdom literature, poets, artists, creatives and spiritual leaders – the musicians, writers, philosophers, mystics - and nature itself - to help me know where I might be located in life's impermanent mystery. We count on someone like Emily Dickinson to tell us that “dying is the wild night and the new road.” We count on Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows to help us see the possible landscape we may be encountering. And I hope you will join me to see what wisdom we can encounter here.
CONVERSATIONS WITH WISDOM - TALKING WITH RAINER MARIA RILKE ABOUT THE NEED OF PRAISE INSIDE OUR GRIEF
To meet with Rainer Maria Rilke, I would be traveling to sit with him in a bitterly cold Château de Muzot in Switzerland in the mid-1920’s.