Swan Song is a new, grassroots death acceptance/community deathcare festival in Canada. Local events under the Swan Song umbrella are held during late October. Here’s a look at the 2019 event presented by the Cariboo Community Deathcaring Network in Williams Lake:
In this interview, Belgian theater practitioner and ritualist Barbara Raes discusses devising new rituals of mourning: I make these rituals as co-creations with artists. I feel that many artists have a certain sensitivity for our profoundly human need for consolation and empathy, and are more adept at connecting to a more spiritual context. Art can … Read more“Today is a Wonderful Day to Die”
NPR offers this survey of how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting the funerary rites of a variety of religions: The World Health Organization in its March 24 guidance on burials of COVID-19 victims says dead bodies are generally not infectious. But its recommendations that relatives not touch or kiss the body and government rules on social distancing … Read more“Coronavirus Is Changing The Rituals Of Death For Many Religions”
This acclaimed 2003 documentary was inspired by the also-acclaimed 1973 book The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. Positing that humans’ awareness (and denial) of their own mortality has been the driving force behind civilization, Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and influenced generations of social anthropologists, philosophers and psychologists.
Alizah Salario’s essay explores the life and work of Dr. Kunchok Gyaltsen, the only practicing Tibetan Buddhist monk to have completed a doctorate in Public Health from an American university. Dr. Kunchok presented two sessions at the 2015 Art of Dying conference in New York City, addressing the challenges and rewards of preparing for a … Read more“How a Cheerful Monk Became a Doctor of Death”
Georgia Perry’s memoir for Narratively reflects on the value of small, comforting traditions in the wake of bereavement: “You can still be in mourning and have ice cream,” my mother explained. She told me this was tradition — that when she was a little girl her father took her and a handful of her cousins … Read more“The Shake of Death”
Art Garfunkel’s song Bright Eyes, from the 1979 film adaptation of Watership Down. Author Richard Adams, who wrote the original novel, developed a fascinating matrix of “Lapine” language and a rich mythology, including tales of the Black Rabbit of Inlé. The Black Rabbit serves Lord Frith – essentially a deification of the sun – by … Read more“The Black Rabbit serves Lord Frith, but he does no more than his appointed task.”
This essay from the Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences offers a useful precis of, and excerpts from the renowned psychoanalyst’s writing on the subject of death: …death is an important interest, especially to an aging person. A categorical question is being put to him, and he is under an obligation to answer it. To … Read more“The Art of Dying Well: A Jungian Perspective on Death and Dying”
Dr. Joel Rowe’s article for The Atlantic makes the humanitarian case for advance directives in allowing terminally ill people to die with as much dignity as may be possible: My mom had prepared me for the worst day of my life. I was equipped with her advance directive, stating that after a short trial of … Read more“The Pandemic Should Change the Way We Talk About Dying”
In her opinion piece for the Scientific American, Dr. Shika Jain makes the valuable point that the binary rhetoric of “combat” is often not useful, and may be actively harmful, to cancer patients and their families: Unfortunately, cancer is not an opponent that can stomped out by sheer will, determination or persistence. A study published in 2015 … Read more“Let’s Stop Talking about Battling Cancer” (and Death)