Offline Lectures/Seminars
Grace North Church's
Fond Farewell Speaker Series
Wednesday Evenings, 7p.m-9p.m.
September 9th through November 4th
September 9, 2009
CONSUMERS' LAST RIGHTS
Karen Leonard has been a "Death Rights Activist" for over
twenty years. She started a "funeral" art gallery,
worked as a legislative aide in Sacramento to advance the
rights of individuals in death care, AND was the researcher for
Jessica Mitford's book The American Way of Death
Revisited.
(After successfully completing the test, you will fill out a form with your mailing address,
and you will receive a verification of your 1 unit in the mail within 10 days.)
HOME DEATHS AND "GREEN" FUNERALS
Jerrigrace Lyons, Founder of Final Passages
A Minister, death midwife, educator, and Reiki Master, Jerrigrace founded the educational non-profit
organization, Final Passages in 1995 to inform people about little known funeral options, natural
death care rights and practicalities, green burials and the benefits of bringing funerals back into the
home and family care. As a pioneer in the new field of home funeral guidance, Jerrigrace has facilitated
hundreds of family-directed funerals, offering choices that specifically address social, environmental,
spiritual and financial needs. She co-authored a complete guidebook, Creating Home Funerals and has appeared
on radio, television and in worldwide publications including The Wall Street Journal (front page), USA Today,
LA Times Magazine and The London Telegraph.
She is featured in the acclaimed POV/PBS Documentary entitled "A Family Undertaking".
(After successfully completing the test, you will fill out a form with your mailing address,
and you will receive a verification of your 1 unit in the mail within 10 days.)
September 16, 2009
CREATING JOY IN THE COMMUNITY
Professor Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., The University of California at Berkeley's, Psychology Department.
He is the author of Born to Be Good: the Science of a Meaningful Life.
(After successfully completing the test, you will fill out a form with your mailing address,
and you will receive a verification of your 1 unit in the mail within 10 days.)
James Baraz, a teacher of meditation and the Awakening Joy course.
Co-founder of Spirit Rock Mediation Center and author of Awakening Joy: An experiential
program to develop our natural capacity for well being.
(After successfully completing the test, you will fill out a form with your mailing address,
and you will receive a verification of your 1 unit in the mail within 10 days.)
October 21, 2009
PLACES FOR THE DEAD: SHRINES, MEMORIALS, AND THE LIVING
Lizette Larson-Miller received her BA in choral conducting from the University of Southern California, her MA
in liturgical studies
from St. John's University, Collegeville, and her PhD in liturgy and history from the Graduate Theological Union.
She has been a faculty member at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, the University of Notre Dame, South Bend,
Indiana, and most recently at the Graduate Theological Union (Church Divinity School of the Pacific) as the Nancy and
Michael Kaehr Chair in Liturgy. Her teaching at the GTU has focussed on two of her special interests, Christian Rites
for the sick, the dying and the dead, and liturgy and architecture, especially the theology of sacred space.
She has published upwards of 50 articles, two books (Medieval Liturgy and The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick)
and is currently completing a book on funerals. This spring semester she will be the distinguished visiting professor
of memory and place at the Center for the Humanities, Grinnell College. Lizette is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of
Los Angeles, and has been most recently an associate priest at Church of the Advent in San Francisco.
This presentation, as part of the "Fond Farewell Speaker Series," will look at places where the dead
are honored, remembered, and engaged with through history, particularly in the more recent manifestations
of roadside shrines and memorials. The resurgence of ritual engagement as a manifestation of the growing recognition
of the reality of death in contemporary American culture and a means of coming to terms with the uncontrollable
nature of our own deaths will be explored from several different perspectives.
(After successfully completing the test, you will fill out a form with your mailing address,
and you will receive a verification of your 1 unit in the mail within 10 days.)