This month’s theme “Death” is meant to facilitate a process of personal reflection, learning, and spiritual growth focused on the topic of death and dying. It brings death, dying, and grief into the light of our daily lives and out of the dark, macabre recesses to which we often relegate it.

Unitarian Universalist views about life after death are informed by both science and spiritual traditions. Many of us live with the assumption that life does not continue after death, and many of us hold it as an open question, wondering if our minds will have any awareness when we are no longer living. Few of us believe in divine judgment after death. It’s in our religious DNA: the Universalist side of our tradition broke with mainstream Christianity by rejecting the idea of eternal damnation.

We turn our focus to death this month, not to turn Sunday Services into grief support groups, nor conduct an intellectual study of death, but rather to provide information and encourage theological reflection, personal and shared narrative, creative expression, journaling, and practical learning and preparation.

The intent is to help the community move from viewing death as an abstract concept to developing a personal recognition of its meaning in their life, with the goal that all who engage in the monthly theme find a closer and more comfortable relationship with their own inevitable death. This theme invites participants to experience death and dying as a healthy part of life, including the preparation, the moment of death, the grieving, and the living on.

See you on Sunday,

Chris