Meditations on Death and Dying

Explorations and Discussions

Meditations on Death and Dying is a monthly series of explorations and discussions devoted to honest, thoughtful engagement with death, dying, and grief as essential parts of the human experience. Meeting on the last Saturday of each month, this series offers a welcoming, reflective space to approach mortality not as something morbid or distant, but as something we live alongside every day.

Each gathering features a guest with a unique relationship to death through lived experience, professional work, spiritual inquiry, or philosophical reflection. Together, we explore the physical, emotional, spiritual, metaphysical, and philosophical dimensions of death, as well as the quieter ways loss shapes our lives, relationships, and communities.

Rather than offering doctrine or conclusions, Meditations on Death and Dying invites shared inquiry. These explorations ask questions such as: How do we live with both the dead and the dying? How do we make space for grief in a culture that often rushes past it? What becomes possible when we stop turning away from mortality and allow it to inform how we live?

Inaugural Gathering

The first gathering in this series opens with the theme of living with both the dead and the dying, guided by a guest whose life and work place him in daily relationship with mortality. Our inaugural guest is a funeral director, Marine, and war veteran, offering a deeply grounded perspective shaped by both service and loss.

Through his work as a funeral director, he is regularly confronted with the fundamental reality of human existence: that we move from spirited, living beings into organic matter that eventually returns to the earth. Alongside this physical truth, he also bears witness to the emotional realities of death, particularly the experiences of those left behind and the ways our culture makes space, or fails to make space, for grief.

This first exploration moves between the natural, practical, philosophical, and even supernatural, honoring both the tangible realities of the body and the invisible forces of grief, memory, and meaning. While the conversation may be intimate, honest, and at times raw, it is guided by compassion and care. The intention is not to sensationalize death, but to create a more loving and accessible way of relating to death as a fact of life and to grief as an ever-present, often unseen force many of us are carrying.

This gathering is free and open to all.
Space is limited, and RSVP is requested to ensure adequate seating.

Whether you are actively grieving, quietly curious, philosophically inclined, or simply seeking a deeper relationship with life, you are warmly welcome.