Death
as Natural and Generative

and no less sacred than life

programs by Connie Barlow & Rev. Michael Dowd

www.TheGreatStory.org/death-programs.html
revised June 2005

Perhaps there is no more alluring portal for experiencing the benefits of evolutionary spirituality — that is, a spirituality grounded in a modern, evolutionary cosmology — than by way of a profoundly new way of understanding death.

Thanks to the sciences of astronomy, astrophysics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, cell biology, embryology, ecology, geography, and math, we can now not only accept but celebrate that:

1. Death is natural and creative at every level of reality.

2. Death is no less sacred than life.

   

Stars that lived and died before our sun was born
created all the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our cells.


 

   

   

 Connie Barlow has written a new parable, "Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star," that celebrates the role that the death of stars plays in the evolution of life: red giants creating carbon; blue stars for other complex atoms. Values include finding one's own gifts, trusting in the ways of the universe, learning that death is natural and important even for stars. The parable is in script form, intended for ADULTS or KIDS to act: 4 characters.

Helping individuals find inspiration and hope in a larger and beneficent context for death is a core function of religions throughout the world. Our culture is reticent to talk and educate about death in meaningful ways, in part, because deep and unexamined assumptions about death hail from widely accepted understandings born of another era, and these old assumptions are not up to the challenges posed by death today. In telling the 14 billion year story of cosmos and life as a sacred story, we (Connie Barlow and Rev. Michael Dowd) have developed programs grounded in the new cosmological understanding born of modern science that present death as natural, generative, and something to be trusted and even celebrated.
  • 28-minute sermon by Connie (mp3 AUDIO)

  • "Death Through Deep-Time Eyes (Connie's preferred title)

  • "The Other Side of Death: An Evolutionary Exaltation" (Michael's preferred title)

  • 3-minute VIDEO CLIP of Connie presenting "Death Through Deep-Time Eyes" at the Unitarian Universalist Church of NW Tucson. (Scroll down to the DVD Celebrating Evolution to view the clip. Full program on that DVD.)

    • Connie Barlow presenting "Death Through Deep Time Eyes"
    at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Northwest Tucson in April 2005

    Both of us begin our programs with an important caveat: Individuals can adopt a new and expanded view of death as natural and generative while continuing to embrace the full diversity of beliefs about what happens to spirt, soul, or consciousness after death, and while honoring the teachings of their particular religious faith. Our aim is simply to offer individuals a larger, natural, sacred context within which to see and experience the material fact of death in a new and liberating way.

    Whether given as a 20 minute sermon in a church on a Sunday morning or a two-hour graphically-rich presentation in a school, a retirement community, to hospice staff/patients, or a myriad of other venues, our programs on death consistently elicit gratitude, trust, hope, and deeply heartfelt stirrings in those who experience them.


     

    "Death Through Deep-Time Eyes"
    by Connie Barlow

    Connie uses this large poster as her primary illustration for examining how a wide range of scientific disciplines offer new and inspiring understandings about the material fact of death and the creativity that flows from it. What makes her presentation heartful and memorable is that she presents the basic information by way of a SONG in 5 verses, "Death Has Lifted Us", and at the end invites the audience to join her in singing the song through. For example, below is the sing-along chart that she uses for Verse 4 (Geology):




    "The Other Side of Death"
    An Evolutionary Exaltation
    by Rev. Michael Dowd

      Michael offers the same insights drawn from science (see list below), but uses a timeline form of chart. At the end of his program, he invites the audience to join in a responsive reading, either

    1. "Yes to the Universe!"

    or

    2. "The Gifts of Death"


    Michael concludes his program (or a program he co-leads with his wife, Connie) with a GUIDED MEDITATION, inviting participants to imagine:

    1. You have been told you have one month to live. How does this shift your priorities? What feelings and thoughts arise with this awareness?

    2. You will go to bed tonight knowing that you will live forever. How does this make you feel? How does this awareness shift your priorities?

    3. You have a chance to witness your own memorial service many years in the future. People have come from all over to celebrate your life and contributions. What are you most grateful to hear people say about you and how you made a difference in their lives?



  • Click for a BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SCIENCE depicted in the charts above.

  • Click for a 3 MINUTE VIDEO CLIP of this program.

  • Click for a 28-minute sermon by Connie (mp3 AUDIO)

  • Click for HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOGRAPH of the main DEATH CHART.

    This website, www.thegreatstory.org, offers several resources for learning and celebrating this new understanding of death. Click for:

  • Song: "Death Has Lifted Us"

  • Song: "Praise Birth and Death Amid the Stars".

  • Responsive Reading: "Yes to the Universe"

  • Responsive Reading: "The Gifts of Death"

  • "The Science Behind the New Understanding of Death"

  • DVD recording of "Death Through Deep-Time Eyes" program on our 4-hour "Celebrating Evolution" DVD

  • "An Alluring View of Death": Interview with Connie Barlow, published in the Sept 2005 issue of What Is Enlightenment? magazine

  • "Remember Who You Are: Living a Mythic Life" (children's curriculum) — 12-part curriculum by Connie Barlow for assisting middle school youth in the life passage from childhood ("Explorers in the Garden") to early adolescence ("Thespians at the Oasis"), which uses the understandings drawn from the 2008 book by Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, and using scene-by-scene the Disney movie The Lion King as a beloved bridge and focus for the middle school mindset. Understanding the naturalness of death of elders and of periodic psychological deaths as one transitions from one stage of life to the next is central to this curriculum.

  • "Tree Talks About Death" (children's story) — This story by Connie Barlow is an interactive non-picture book, designed to be read interactively to a child (ages 6 through 11, along with any post-teen, playful adult). The reading takes about 20 minutes, and the goal is to convey a mythic tale through which the deep understandings, thanks to the scientific worldview, of the creative role that death plays at all scales of the cosmos can be grasped by both head and heart.

  • "Leaving a Legacy": Connie Barlow's proposal for a new form of Group Health Insurance to serve individuals who share a philosophy that death is a natural part of life — not something to be battled no matter the emotional, physical, and financial cost.

  • "The Dance: An Evolutionary Parable Celebrating Death" by Larry Edwards, as published in EarthLight magazine (in PDF format only).

  • "The Wishing Star" - online mp3 AUDIO of a terrific kids story on the naturalness of death of elders.

  • A fabulous website, in honor of Jack Heckelman, providing Resources for Dying in the Home and Home Death Care


     

       

    		   

    		 Connie Barlow has written a new parable, "Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star," that celebrates the role that the death of stars plays in the evolution of life: red giants creating carbon; blue stars for other complex atoms. Values include finding one's own gifts, trusting in the ways of the universe, learning that death is natural and important even for stars. The parable is in script form, intended for ADULTS or KIDS to act: 4 characters.


    		     Living trees are built upon the bodies of ancestors: wood is nothing less than dead cells filled with strong and enduring lignin.

    •    

     

    "I am at peace with his death."
    In the summer of 2004, Connie and Michael were jointly presenting an evening workshop at a Unitarian Universalist church in Ohio. Connie did a component on the creation of atoms inside of stars, and the importance of those stars dying and giving back to the galaxy all that they had created during their lives. A woman sent us an email afterwards, which read: "During Connie's talk about stardust, I knew why I had come. My father, who took his own life in May, always told me I was made of 'star-stuff'. After hearing you, I am at peace with his death. His spirit is with the goddess, but even stars die, and his substance will continue on as new life. Thanks so much!"
       As the years pass, examples continue to accrue of how this perspective can restore hope after the death of a loved one. In the summer of 2007, Connie's sermon on stardust at a Unitarian Universalist church evoked this tearful comment from a woman: "I lost my son six months ago, and this is the first thing that has helped me with my grief. Thank you!" In autumn of 2008, Michael's talk at a spiritual retreat center in Cleveland evoked another tearful expression of gratitude — this time from a woman who finally felt she could come to terms with the death of her three-year-old grandchild.

     

    		   


       

     

    "Every day I deal with death."
    Connie received this email in 2007, from a young woman, after Connie's sermon on death at a Unitarian Universalist church in the Midwest: "I am a funeral director intern and will be getting my license within the next couple of months. Every day I deal with death. Every day I hear sermons about Adam's sin and death's sting. I always feel strange, sitting at the back listening to whichever preacher happens to be the pick of the day. I always knew I didn't believe what they spoke.
        I learned about evolution and the Big Bang from teachers who didn't believe in it, but who had to teach it. I watch programs on it on the Discovery Channel. I believe it. But I have never had it put into a story that could define me. It was always distant, something that heppened in the past. You brought to me the first creation story that I could relate to. No talking snake in a tree tempting a nude woman. No. You gave me words to a story that is based in fact — something I can make my own, something that is my own. And for that, I thank you."

     

    		   


    WWW www.TheGreatStory.org