 Dear New School Friends:
Rachel Naomi Remen gave a beautiful presentation last month at the first event in our End of Life Conversations series, co-presented by the Coastal Health Alliance. You can listen to the podcast on our website.
I am looking forward to seeing some of you this Sunday, October 3, from 2 to 4 at Commonweal when I present the second of Commonweal's End of Life Conversations.
 | | Tim Weed, Master Musician |
As part of that conversation, I am really delighted that master musician Tim Weed will be joining me Sunday. Tim has been doing an evening of music in the Cancer Help Program for some months now. He is extraordinarily gifted. We will raise our voices together (all of us!) in song.
As many of you know, we have been talking about the end of life in the Commonweal Cancer Help Program for 26 years. The end of life remains as mysterious and profound a question to me as ever.
What is death? Is it the end? Is there something after death? Or is it essentially mysterious? The Cancer Help Program has been asking and reflecting on these questions for more than two decades.
What happens to you when you reflect on death? Are you afraid - of death itself or of dying? Or something regretted, or left undone, or incomplete?
What do you want to leave behind? Do you know about ethical wills?
Have you said what you need to say to people you care about? Or left letters for them to be sure you feel complete? Since none of us know the appointed day of our death, isn't this worth thinking about even if we assume death is some distance away?
Have you ever "practiced" dying? Why do so many of the mystical traditions teach that mystics must "die" to the world in order to be reborn into the mystical life? And why do they connect this mystical death so deeply to physical death at the end of life?
What do we make of the scientific literature on near death experiences? Five percent of Americans report these experiences, and there are commonalities in these experiences reported from researchers around the world. (Check www.iands.org).
What are the books, poems and films that speak to us about death? The Oxford Book of Death is one of my favorites.
When we face our own death, how can we minimize unnecessary suffering? How good are the hospices in our communities? What about palliative care? What about "self-deliverance?"
And what about grieving - those who are left behind?
These are some of the questions we will talk about Sunday. I invite you to join our inquiry. If you can't join us, you can listen to the podcasts.
Thanks for being part of The New School community.
Michael Lerner Founder, The New School
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