By Joseph Plummer
Our primary medical and social culture often works to cover the experience and reality of dying. If we can converse more openly about death, we can feel, experience, and grow. When death is denied or avoided, much more suffering occurs.
If death is acknowledged in the daily equation of living, it opens space for ease and acceptance. There may be a vivid quality of clear attention that comes when someone is in a life-threatening situation. This can also occur when someone mourns and grieves a loss. The impact is profoundly moving, even inspiring, in the very midst of sadness.
One may even learn about dying as an act of love as Canadian teacher Stephen Jenkinson puts it. In his book “Die Wise,” Jenkinson writes: “To die wise carries an abiding faith in life… love for the world… and asks that same faith and love of those who attend to it when it comes.” This talk uses excerpts from Jenkinson’s work and discusses his perspective as a former palliative care social worker, poet, and speaker.
Rev. Louise Green is the minister of congregational care at All Souls Unitarian in Washington, D.C. She is also a spiritual director, children’s book author, and teacher of yoga and meditation. Her several decades of work as a community organizer in New York City and the D.C. Metro area informs her ministry and support for liberation movements. Green was raised on the border in El Paso, Texas, and has a lifelong appreciation of Mexico. She looks forward to returning to San Miguel de Allende and the UU Fellowship.
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal faith inviting its community to gather around a set of harmonizing values and principles for living. Our UU Fellowship welcomes people of all ages, races, religions, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Belief in a divinity is not the central issue around which we gather for worship and generous action. Rather, we come together with a belief in community, love, compassion, social justice, reverence for nature, and the spirituality of music, all within the interconnected web of existence.
UUFSMA donates generously to support nonprofit organizations that provide health, educational, and environmental services for underserved communities in the San Miguel region. Please support this work by clicking on the website home page Donate button.
To participate in our online Sunday Service, visit www.uufsma.org and click on the Zoom Service button on the home page. If requested, enter password: 294513. Sign-in from anywhere Sunday mornings between 10:15-10:25am. Enjoy previous services at https://www.youtube.com/UUFSMA.
In addition to continuing live Zoom services, UUFSMA has returned to in-person Sunday services. Reservations are no longer necessary.
*Joseph Plummer is the UUFSMA board secretary
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Sunday Service
“Let’s Talk About Death”
Speaker: Reverend Louise Green
Sun., Jan. 22, 10:30am
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/414604040
Password: 294513
