Bringing Death Out of the Shadow

November 12, 2015
Greg Epstein
Greg Epstein is the Humanist chaplain at Harvard. / Photo: Justin Ide

"We spend a lot of time in denial that we are going to die. With all the choices that we make, how many would we revise and do differently if we were aware that we are mortal?"

That question was posed earlier this fall at the Waking Up to Dying Project's traveling exhibition, held in Somerville, by Greg Epstein, Harvard University Humanist chaplain and executive director of the Humanist Hub. Epstein, MTS '07, is part of a growing movement to bring discussions about dying to the forefront of our attention.

As the population ages and life spans increase, dying has become more medicalized and de-personalized than ever before. But secular and religious communities alike are seeking to address and overcome the fear involved in peering behind the white curtain in the hopes of bridging the divide between living and dying.

Joining Epstein on the panel "Spiritual Perspectives on Death, Dying, and Life" were HDS student Rod Owens and the Rev. Jeff Mansfield.

"There is a tendency for people to hide when they are dying. The body and what it does in death can be embarrassing to us," said Mansfield, who is pastor of First Church Somerville. Mansfield stated that his congregation makes a point of talking about death early and often. Although the average age at First Church is 35, death is no stranger in their midst.

"We make dying a community event. We don't hide it," Mansfied explained. "We will face down death together, so you're not going to be alone."

Rod Owens, a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism and MDiv candidate, looks to unexamined assumptions as sources of pain and struggle.

"We experience tremendous discomfort because we are always expecting things to be the same, but this creation has no permanent basis. It is always shifting," Owens said.

Instead of projecting a nonexistent future, he challenges people to "bring death out of the shadow and into how we are actually living."

For Epstein, this means "talking about the things we don't usually talk about" and requires that we be "honest with ourselves about our fears and our feelings about death."

“We think of ourselves as midwives. We help the soul and the body with its transition.”

The Waking Up to Dying exhibit included audio stories, panel discussions, informal conversations, and resources to help people talk about and plan for the inevitable.

Nina Thompson, the executive director of the project, came up with the idea three years ago. She was working as a hospice volunteer and observed that her elderly patients were surprised that they were dying. Her mantra became "What would happen if we paid more attention to how we die?"

The Conversation Project, located in Cambridge, was founded five years ago to help people talk about their end-of-life wishes.

Elizabeth Aeschlimann, MDiv candidate at HDS, worked at the Conversation Project last year as part of her Field Education requirement. She is especially enthusiastic about the Conversation Project's starter kit—an informative packet that offers questions and suggestions for reflecting on one's own end-of-life wishes and for bringing the conversation to loved ones.

"Every time I shared the starter kit in a divinity school or seminary," said Aeschlimann, "I felt the exponential power of the students in the room to change the way countless others approach death and dying."

Aeschlimann's work inspired her to join the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston, which is a Jewish burial society that ritually purifies and prepares the bodies of the deceased before they are interred.

"We go through a ritual washing, dress them in white garments reminiscent of the high priest of Jerusalem, and place them in a plain pine coffin," explained Hal Miller-Jacobs, treasurer and director of the Community Hevra Kadisha. "We think of ourselves as midwives. We help the soul and the body with its transition."

First-year MDiv candidate Antwan Steele spent the last three years working at a funeral home in Nashville, Tennessee. Although the majority of families he served were Christian, many came from non-Christian backgrounds as well. Steele is attending HDS in order to explore the "multiplicity of views about death and the afterlife, as well as the different rituals individuals participate in to make sense of death."

At First Church, Mansfield's congregation has a sandalwood cross that was carved in Jerusalem and that is used in their own community ritual.

"Anyone in our congregation that has died or thought they were dying has held onto that cross," Mansfield explained. "It reminds us of everyone who has held onto it."

Meanwhile, Epstein is innovating rituals both old and new. As an ordained secular Humanist rabbi, he has created non-theistic Jewish observances for the culturally Jewish community. This fall, the Humanist Hub hosted a Death Café, an informal venue for discussing death and spiritual perspectives on dying.

"I'm trying to get people together to offer more love, more connection, and more significance," said Epstein. "We've got a 'love of evolving' that we've been called on to do."

—by Michelle Bentsman