In our last issue I mentioned the intriguing Conscious Living, Conscious Dying Conference that we stage between 4-11 April this year and here Judith Berry, one of the organising team, explains how this Conference came about.
The seed for Conscious Living, Conscious Dying was planted during the second Medical Marriage conference which left me with the thought that it would be good to be able to explore the topic of death; and as so often happens, I found other people with the same thought. Mo Willett had been to a workshop on death and dying and had evolved one of her own called Passport to Heaven.
We wanted to take it all further. It needed a little time for our vision to gather strength and, sadly, there were to be three deaths in the community during that time: Joanie, Doris and Ben the still-born baby. Each passing brought with it some of the issues surrounding death: care for the dying, the shock of sudden death, loss, and the grieving process.
Many people helped to care for Joanie during her last twelve weeks with us and I know that if I receive nothing else at the Findhorn Foundation, the time I spent with her was a gift I shall treasure all my life. To be with her gentle, vulnerable, spiritual presence was indescribably beautiful.
I learned that to enter the dying process is not to be prevented from being an effective power in the lives of those around us. When my own mother died I was young, had had no previous experience of death, and afterwards it felt unfinished for me. I wished I had done more, talked to her more even though she was unconscious, touched her more physically, knowing that on another level she was aware of my presence. Joanie gave me the chance to do what I had been unable to do with my mother, to give and to experience my capacity for love. On the occasions when Joanie’s carers got together for sharings there would often be at least one of us weeping from the sheer beauty, gracefulness and joy of what was happening. I hope people who come to this conference will receive some of that joy and strength through listening and sharing and go away more able to deal with what comes to them and their loved ones.
For me living consciously includes living with the awareness of death, constantly working with and releasing along the way, so that at the end we are not held back or blocked by regrets, recriminations or guilt in our expression of love. Without that baggage we can be open to the gifts that are tumbled together with the sadness and grief of loss.
When the conference group formed to begin work, the idea immediately received a warm response. People hearing of its conception said how glad they were that the Foundation was at last addressing this aspect of life. The letters we received from the presenters, often people who are working with the dying, were full of exactly the vibrancy and life we had hoped for and which we trust will infuse the conference week so that although there will be, inevitably, many sad, painful and touching moments, there will also be the support and energy to release these and to celebrate being alive.
The days are structured to hold that balance. Participants will begin each day in their small “home” groups which will give them time and space to contribute individual thoughts and reactions, to receive support if need be, put questions and problems, and to decide on points they want developed by a panel of presenters later in the week. Or they might decide to use the time to take a walk to the beach, sing, or practice T’ai Chi. It is their time. Your time. There will be a presentation from tea-break to lunchtime each morning and each afternoon a variety of workshops to choose from. The evenings are for practical presentations, music, theatre, dance, and on the last night there will be a celebration.
The presenters are all excitingly alive, dynamic and inspirational people. The areas they will explore will include: viewing death in relation to life; facing death; dealing with personal loss; conscious living and releasing; ethics and medical intervention; preparation, planning and funeral ritual; and, most importantly perhaps, choosing to live.
The conference group hope there will be a “cutting edge” and that it will not only be a sharing of the present work with the living and the dying, important though that is, but that those of us who want to explore the boundaries of life and death will be able to do so, to consider what happens between and beyond in fact what, at the moment of death, we are being born into.
We look forward to sharing the whole of this life-enhancing experience with many of you.
Judith Berry was interviewed by Carol Alexander
Born in England, emigrated to Australia age 8; career in primary school education. Took early retirement as headteacher, moved to the Community. Enjoying a supportive role in many aspects of Community
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