Last month at Lutheran Church of the Savior the Faith-Based Wellness Partners and I were very excited to lead a two-week Sunday Adult Forum series on end-of-life concerns. In our FBWP presentation, hospice professionals focused on medical decisions as one nears the end of life, and provided Designation of Patient Advocate Forms as well as instructions on how to complete them.
The following week, I talked about preparation for a funeral or memorial service, and participants received funeral planning documents and resource lists (coming soon to the LCS website) so that we could each express our wishes for the event of our own passing or that of a loved one. One surprising result of our discussion that day was an interest in green burial,
so I wanted to make a few resources available so that folks can look further into this recent movement in deathcare. Green burial offers environmentally friendly and natural ways to treat one's body with respect after death, and I am very interested in learning more about this option for myself and others. The Green Burial Council is a national leader in this movement, providing links to funeral providers and cemeteries as well as information.
Believe it or not, we so enjoyed our time talking about death this year that we plan to expand this focus and offer multiple opportunities in the coming year to continue our conversations about dealing with all the complicated realities of dying. Upcoming topics include grief, hopefully to be led by a hospice chaplain, as well as green burial options, financial and tax planning for end-of-life, and more. We further anticipate celebrating All Saints Sunday this year and in coming years by offering one of these discussions on that Sunday as well as other times during the year.
I am thrilled that we of Lutheran Church of the Savior are willing to address such an important topic as a community of faith. Church should be a community in which we can talk safely about the things we cannot talk about elsewhere, difficult and personal things. Death is one such topic, but rather than fearing and avoiding it, we can stand up and admit that each of us will one day die. Our faith tells us that death is not the end of our story, not even close, but we grieve and mourn and lament as all people do when losing loved ones. In faith we can be courageous in facing our own eventual deaths in advance, making plans so that the most painful time of loss does not also become a time of overwhelming decision-making, responsibility, and business. We can grieve more wholly when we can live those heart-wrenching days more as a beloved daughter than as a funeral-planner, medical decider, or executor of a will.
Really listen to the stories of life over death we retell in the coming week. Let the reality of God's powerful love for us, a power even over death, instill in you a faith and courage to seek out resources for the eventuality of death, and to engage those closest to you in conversation about your wishes, your hopes, even your fears. It is not shameful for a Christian to fear death, but it is tragic when we fail to open up to one another about our vulnerabilities, to walk together as sisters and brothers in Christ.
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