Living and Dying Well: End of Life Reflecting and Planning
The Angel of Death - Evelyn De Morgan, 1880
People throughout time have utilized the wisdom of loss and surrender as a compass on their spiritual journeys, the way they orient their path. However, in contemporary Western culture, it often seems that death is being erased from our collective lexicon, its offerings nearly forgotten.
Through this series, we invite you to join with Christians across time and space who have, in study and spiritual practice, focused on death. Our work is both practical and theoretical. We explore how to be with our dying loved ones as well as how to be dying. We will devote time to some of the most important – and often neglected – conversations of our lives: our plans for our end-of-life medical care, our funerals, and our estates; and we will create the documents that will help others follow those plans. In each session, a new spiritual practice will be offered to aid in this vital work of “numbering our days”
Pastor Felicia and three highly qualified practitioners have joined to create this series. You may watch these videos at your leisure, taking time to do the exercises suggested, and coming back to them again and again as you need. The videos are accompanied with worksheets that can be downloaded. Over all, you may find this Resource List and this Question and Answer Page helpful.
As you work through this material, you may wish to have contact with one of our Presenters.
Please reach out to our Communications Liaison, Laurie, at communications@stpauls-fc.org and she will connect you with the right team member.
We would also appreciate you letting us know at the same email address how engaging with this information was for you and what you would like to see next.
Session One
Materials for this session include:
a link to the Death Deck website
these prompts for writing your own obituary
these images — or choose another image of death
these Questions and Answers
session two
Materials for this session include:
the Do Not Resuscitate form (DNR)
Session Five
Materials for this session include:
A handout from Matthew Meuli, Attorney/Counselor of Meuli Law Office, PC - Estate & Business Planning Counsel
Matt’s contact information: (970) 820-0090
session six
Materials for this session include:
Questions and Answers - What participants have asked, and our presenters’ responses
Links to:
The Natural Funeral - agency of our presenter, Becky Davis, Holistic Funeral Coordinator and Pre-Need Consultant
Meaningful Donation - Non-Transplant Donation
our presenters
A rare terminal illness propelled Amy Agape to utilize the gifts of her dying journeys to practice new ways of walking with individuals and organizations. She is a healthcare chaplain (currently in a hospital setting after years in hospice), a bereavement counselor, and a spiritual director. As an educator and guide, she teaches family members and professionals working in ministry and medicine to become compassionate, contemplative witnesses. Amy dreams of a world where all people experience the profound blessing of being companioned with loving presence. She intends to spend the remainder of her days helping to create that world.
Alex Donovan is a chaplain who has worked in the hospice, hospital, correctional, behavioral health, and corporate settings. Her experience with her own mother’s death at age 55, and with the care the family received from their hospice team, continues to guide Alex’s work as a chaplain and an advocate of Advanced Care Planning. She currently works with Nurse Practitioners and healthcare leaders around the country trying to create more supportive and sustainable environments for our healthcare professionals, but her greatest life’s work is at the bedside of the dying. Alex’s first love is poetry, which she uses both for personal integration and to help others find moments of reflection, honoring, and healing.
Playing music for people experiencing critical illness and end-of-life care has been Elaine Hild’s lifelong calling. Through her small business, Palliative Music, Elaine plays harp and viola in healthcare facilities and homes in the Fort Collins area. As an academic musicologist, Elaine has worked since 2017 to recover the historic music sung for the dying during the European Middle Ages. The resulting book, Music in Medieval Rituals for the End of Life, was published this year by Oxford University Press.
The Reverend Felicia SmithGraybeal is rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. With more than 20 years experience in helping families make the transitions when loved ones grow very ill and/or die, Pastor Felicia believes strongly in planning for the end of life experience - for families talking together, making plans, and drawing up the necessary documents - before the crisis of diminished capacity or death occurs.