DEATH CAFE

-bringing light to the dark-

While death is inevitable, discussions about it are often taboo in Western culture. We spend so much of our time chasing youth that when death approaches, too few of us have practical plans for it, not to mention spiritual ease.

That is what a Death Cafe is all about, to create a space for these conversations.

“Some people just want to know how to get a living will. Others are young and actively grieving the loss of someone close to them. It’s a rich atmosphere, and everyone is supportive of total strangers. The irony is that it’s also life-affirming. What we all seem to come back to is, ‘If I know I’m going to die, how can I live my life to the fullest now?’ ”

-Bill Palmer, host of San Francisco’s Death Cafe

“I believe that engaging and working with death has a massive part to play in building a better world. Our main innovation has been to try and eliminate the power imbalance between those who deal with death professionally and the rest of us.

At a Death Cafe, no one has answers for others. It’s more a chance to find your own.”

There is a collective need to bring this type of conversation into the mainstream. For so long, death has been the purview of doctors and priests. Not anymore.

It can be a profound spiritual experience, and incredibly life-affirming, to be in communion with others while navigating the shadowed territories of death and emerging into the light on the other side.

Death Cafe is where ‘the scary unknown’ becomes ‘the great mystery.’