Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Conference About Spirituality of Death and Dying

Conference Announcement
Spiritual Views of Death and the Afterlife

Sponsored by: 

Where? Berkshire South Regional Community Center, 15 Crissey Street, Great Barrington
When? Sunday, February 3, 2013 1:30 – 4:30 p.m.
How Much? A $10 contribution to cover basic costs.
For more information contact: Rabbi Stern-Kaufman or Deborah Alecson

The Rimon (Resource Center for Jewish Spirituality) is presenting an interfaith forum on the spiritual beliefs and rituals related to the process of dying, death, and the afterlife as understood by many of our world religions.

The Forum will take place at Berkshire South Regional Community Center in Great Barrington on Sunday, February 3, 2013, 1:30 – 4 pm. Topics to be explored will include: customs surrounding care for the deceased; the journey of the soul after death; the relationship between the living and the dead; and what these traditions teach regarding preparation for this ultimate transition.

The presenters and their respective traditions or congregations are as follows:
The Rev. Mr. Charles Van Ausdall (Congregational Church)
Ann-Elizabeth Barnes (Sacred Undertaking)
Iman Salim Chishti (Islam)
Sharon Coleman, Ph.D. (Buddhism)
Sister Colette Hanlon (Catholicism
The Rev. Liza Marcato (Christian Community Church, Movement for Religious Renewal)
Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman (Judaism).

The moderator for the forum is Deborah Golden Alecson, M.S., adjunct faculty for the School of Health Sciences, Excelsior College, where she teaches, among other courses, “Death, Dying and Bereavement” and “Spirituality in Life Transitions.”

This conference is an opportunity to address one of the greatest existential concerns for each of us; and to learn more about our own faith tradition and those of others to help us find meaning in our mortality.  Our distinguished panel of presenters will first talk about their spiritual views and rituals as understood by their specific faith tradition, to then be followed by questions from the audience. 

This event is co-sponsored by First Congregational UCC, Great Barrington, Hevreh of Southern Berkshires, HospiceCare in the Berkshires, Sacred Undertaking, Women’s Interfaith Institute, and the Christian Community Church Movement for Religious Renewal.  The fee for this program is $10.

Please contact either Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman, (413) 274-1034, info@rimonberkshires.org or Deborah Golden Alecson, (413) 881-4065, DAlecson@msn.com. 

Reservations are not necessary. We look forward to what we will learn from our presenters and from the attendees.

Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World (Audiobook)

Brian Maurer would like to alert you to a FREE AUDIO BOOK, available until December 20.  Beyond Religion, written by the Dalai Lama and read by Martin Sheen, will be free from Audible.com until 12.20!  Is it a come-on?  Does it matter?  If you listen to books, this is a great opportunity.  Go to: Beyond Religion Audible.

Product Description from Amazon:  "A stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels—including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values. Beyond Religion is a blueprint for all those who yearn for a life of spiritual fulfillment as they work for a better world.

In Beyond Religion, the Dalai Lama elaborates and deepens his vision for the nonreligious way. Transcending the mere "religion wars," he outlines a system of secular ethics that gives tolerant respect to religion—those that ground ethics in a belief in God and an afterlife, and those that understand good actions as leading to better states of existence in future lives. And yet, with the highest level of spiritual and intellectual authority, the Dalai Lama makes a claim for what he calls a third way. This is a system of secular ethics that transcends religion as a way to recognize our common humanity and so contributes to a global human community based on understanding and mutual respect."

Go For It!!

Marginal Notes: The Way

Emilio Estevez's 2010 epic cinematic journey “The Way”unfolds along the panoramic backdrop of el Camino de Santiago—the Way of Saint James—the medieval pilgrimage route across northern Spain to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela where the remains of the Apostle are interred.

Filmed on location against the gorgeous landscapes of northern Spain, the spiritual journey of American ophthalmologist Thomas Avery (Martin Sheen) begins as he is called from the comforts of his California home to Saint Jean Pied de Port in France to identify the body of his only son Daniel (Emilio Estevez). Avery elects to walk the Camino on behalf of his son, embarking with Daniel’s ashes which he dutifully portions out along the way.  more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for 32 years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

10,000 Buddhas

On a recent visit to Japan, Ginny Tanji captured a vivid image:

the hillside temple's
paper lanterns burn brightly --
10,000 Buddhas!

Yom Keeper

Today is the holiest day of the Jewish year.  Today is for reflection;  for Awe. Most religions have a similar day.  

Today, sheer chance directed me to an amazing video.  Most of you will like it.  It's a real "keeper" -- perhaps it is a "Yom Keeper." Click on the image and wait a few seconds for it to load up.  The video is six minutes long.

For this video's credits, see:

 

 

The 75-year-old Lady Reflects Upon Her Condition

by Judith Bruder

When I was in the hospital
(she said)
with this last illness ---
and I was delirious ---
(she said)
people were kind.
They were very kind.
You see those flowers?
Yellow flowers, over there?
My neighbor sent them; those are only part of what he sent,
(she said)
and there were many more,
so many flowers.

This is a fragment.  Download Bruder Lady Reflects.

"The poem dates from 1985 and almost wrote itself," Ms. Bruder tells us.  "I simply transcribed and shaped an experience recounted to me by my friend, an extraordinary lady, now long gone. She was Irish, which perhaps explains its everyday poetry."

Author Bio: Judith Bruder is a free-lance philosopher whose published works include a novel, a memoir, a translation from the French, and numerous articles and short stories. She trained in addictions counseling and chaplaincy, and worked for eight years in Campus Ministry at Fordham at Lincoln Center.

J.B. has recently emerged in the Blogosphere with: Touch 2 Touch and A View From the Woods.

 

Muslims in the Middle

In case you missed this amazing NY Times Op-Ed piece, you might want to read it.

"Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith."

"Few in the U.S. or Europe remember that a devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”

Click on Muslims in the Middle to read this important article. The author, William Dalrymple, is a noted historian and writer about the Middle East, India and Pakistan.

Marginal Notes: First Light

 

I descend the stairs in darkness to the kitchen.  While the coffee brews I peer out the back window.  The first light of morning sketches out the structures of the garage, the scalloped fence and the trees beyond.  Now merely shades of grey, these objects will soon take on their true colors in the increasing intensity of the light of the sun.  >>more

 

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: Addiction—biochemical bondage or voluntary behavior?

 

“Addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease.”  Few would dispute this statement purported by the National Institute on Drug Addiction (NIDA).  Those of us who work in the disciplines of clinical medicine and research pharmacology have been inculcated with its corollary:  “once an addict, always an addict.” Such claims conjure up the notion that those addicted to substances remain powerless over their pharmaceutical spells. Now comes a work—Addiction: A Disorder of Choice—in which research psychologist Gene Heyman challenges the view that substance abuse is an irresistible act wholly beyond the control of the user. >>more

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: Living on the edge of being

In an article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine on Aug. 26, 1990—Doctor, Talk to Me—Anatole Broyard envisioned the ideal physician who would treat a patient's body—and his soul:

''In learning to talk to his patients, the doctor may talk himself back into loving his work. He has little to lose and much to gain by letting the sick man into his heart. If he does, they can share, as few others can, the wonder, terror and exaltation of being on the edge of being, between the natural and the supernatural.''  >>more

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."