Today Tahnee sits down with Stephen Jenkinson, author, storyteller, musician, and culture activist, for a very real and very potent conversation around living, dying, and what it takes to embrace the fragility and asymmetry of life. Influenced by a diversity of life experience and his work in death centred care, Stephen holds deep reverence for the art of living, a journey that is synonymous with loss. As an advocate for embodying death within the experience of life, Stephen asks us to engage with the practice of loss, of learning to live in the absence of something we once held dear or true as a preparation for the promised and very tangible characteristic of life; death. Stephen views dying as a moral obligation, inviting the idea that to die mindfully, deliberately and consciously is a political act, a religious or spiritual event worth respecting as much as the breathing part of life. Stephen poses the very important question that is so absent in our western culture; what is to become of me when I die? Inviting us to hold awareness around the suggestion that to acknowledge the transient nature of life, is to be pertetually overwhelmed, a notion that is so beautifully captured in the following line he recites from an old provencal prayer; "God help me. My boat is so small and your sea so immense."
Throughout this discourse, Stephen encourages us to welcome the entire spectrum of living, to embrace the varied gradients that are expressed and experienced. We're summoned to ask ourselves whether we can cultivate the courage and embody the wisdom to remember the ones we love in the myriad of contexts they may inhabit. Whether we can we love the decrepit and decaying aspects of ourselves and others with as much vigour and enthusiasm as the parts that are robust, shiny and effervescent. If we can we sit alongside the dying with a smile instead of a grimace as they dissolve out of the breath based living that is so pedestaled and celebrated in our death illiterate culture. We are prompted to consider why death is continuously shunned and sanctioned to the dark corners of our psyches, asked whether we, in our enduring efforts to be the biggest, brightest and most gallant version of ourselves, are missing the poetry of loss? It's in these questions that perhaps we begin to decipher the language crafted around our living and therefore our dying, to know and to develop the relationship we share with it. A powerful and important chat today.
Stephen & Tahnee discuss:
- Stephen's journey into death work.
- Living as an embodiment of death.
- Natural vs medicated death.
- The extension of life as an extension of death.
- Shepherding children through death and loss.
- Approaching death with willingness vs resistance.
Resources
Guest Links Orphan Wisdom Website Orphan Wisdom FacebookStephen's Youtube
Mentioned In This Episode Die Wise Book Faith, Hope and Carnage Book
Related Podcasts Death, Ceremony, and Walking Towards Grace with Zenith Virago (EP#117)
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Check Out The Transcript Below:
https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/only-living-people-die-with-stephen-jenkinson-ep-203