FULL PROGRAM

• How can we achieve a less fearful and more conscious death?
• How important are the qualities of love and forgiveness as the moment of death approaches?
• How can we live our daily lives in such a way to better prepare us for death?

Since the phenomenal impact of the book “The American Way of Death” in the 1960s, we have slowly come to recognize that not all cultures look at crossing the threshold from life to death in the same way. This program brings together two leaders in the end-of-life movement, one Buddhist and one Christian, to explore the qualities that best help the dying and their surviving families to cross that threshold. The program underscores the profound truth that only by more fully understand the meaning of death, can we come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of life.

Therese Schroeder-Sheker is a lay Benedictine, the founder of the Chalice of Repose Project and the palliative medical modality known as “music-thanatology.” Therese and her musician-clinician colleagues work in hospitals and hospices to facilitate intensified living through the possibility of a blessed, peaceful or conscious death.

Frank Ostaseski, a practicing Buddhist, is the co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project and currently serves as the director of The Metta Institute. He leads workshops and hospice centers, encouraging people to use death, tragedy and vulnerability as catalysts for powerful transformation.