Pineridge Blog
Three years ago we started a Death Café at Pine Ridge, since then we have met monthly for snacks and open and honest conversations about the end life issues, grief that is still healing, paper work necessary to indicate preferences, and bucket list items. We regularly have between ten and twenty people attend, half of whom are not members of the church. The biggest surprise to those who come is that we laugh together way more than we expected to when talking about death.
Death Café (no I didn’t choose the name, but it has started a lot of great conversations) began a few years ago in Europe and through the miracle of social media has spread all over the world. There are hundreds of groups who gather like we do to have snacks (that’s the café part) and discuss whatever comes up around the topic of death (paper work, DNR’s, physician assisted suicide, funerals, wills, hopes, dreams and anything else that someone brings). We don’t try to change each others’ minds; we don’t have too many programs; and we agree to bring the meandering conversation back to death and dying--something we have all thought a lot about, have personal experience with, and really haven’t discussed much. The Death Cafe Web site states the goal of these cafes is: “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.”
In the past couple of years I have had many, many people in the church ask me about the DC and say, “I really hope I can come sometime.” But life is busy, its hard to come to a new group, etc. So I want to make it easy for you to experience it if you like. We will meet on Sunday, May 6 during the Sunday School hour in the Eddy Room.