BY ALEX BAIRD Superstition I have to admit that I was rather surprised … the lady had glanced at my business card and then with a visible shudder, insisted that I take it back. She wouldn’t even touch it. “I’m very superstitious,” she explained. It was not a reaction that I had come across before. Of course, Wills and estate planning were not ideal topics for a chance meeting, but to be fair, she had asked me what I did…
CEDAR has been very busy teaching professionals around the county how to talk about death, dying and loss to their students, clients, family & friends. Here are some new recruits who completed the Level I: Death Education for Health & Wellbeing. They include Diane Drummond, Severn Hospice; Nick Herbert, Energize; Jenny England, Derwen College; Amanda Crane, Shropshire Youth Association; our own CEDAR volunteer – Tina Hughes; and Lindsay Barton of Partners in Social Enterprise. They are keen to take our…
Whether or not you follow a particular belief or have no belief, moral values in an age of anxiety will always be of benefit if you want your community to thrive. At CEDAR we strive to remain neutral in our teaching and understanding of death, dying and loss. This becomes particularly important in light of the 22 May 2017 bombing at the end of the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. Below is a special message from Pope Francis as he addresses…
CEDAR is launching our new Life Lessons programme for young people, which will run in Oswestry this year. The programme, which is sponsored by the office of John Campion Police & Crime Commissioner of West Mercia is also supported by the Shropshire NHS CCG Young Health Champions’ group and promises to be both rewarding and constructive. This year the new cohort of students will join graduates from the 2014/2015 group of ‘Dragon Riders’ to help create learning packs for schools to…
The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Edited by Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpentier (2014) Palgrave Macmillian Thanatological research in the social sciences and the humanities acknowledges that death is culturally and socially embedded. The idea of the social construction of death has been taken on board, albeit slowly, by the social and cultural study of death, but explicit reflections on the underlying ontologies and epistemologies of this paradigm remain scarce. This edited volume aims to strengthen the…
The novel is particularly poignant in its portrayal of the often isolating feeling of loss, alongside the crucial role that communities, friends and family can play in overcoming this.
Pictures of My Father – 21st March to 4th April Surface Gallery, 16 Southwell Road, Nottingham NG1 1DL CEDAR CIC is very pleased to be supporting this wonderful exhibition at the Surface Gallery in Nottingham. This exhibition came about as a means to explore personal grief and bereavement. Dr Day, a professional photographer and lecturer, chose his lens to help him explore what loss is, what it is not, and what is imagined in ‘nothingness’. Well worth seeing. Here is…
Having just won the coveted 2014 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, we thought we should feature Helen MacDonald’s book ‘H is for Hawk’ here. It tells the story of how her father’s death prompted Helen to follow a childhood dream and become a falconer. She discusses how the experience of working with a bird of prey, being in natural surroundings and feeling her soul sore with the bird helped her to gain a new insight into death, grief and loss.…
Kapleau, Roshi P (35 Rev Updated Edition, 2013) Three Pillars of Zen, New York: Anchor Books, division of Random House Philip Kapleau (who died fairly recently in his 90s) was one of the first, if not the first, Westerner to qualify as an accredited Zen Master. His book is also one of the first to concentrate on the practice of Zen, rather than the theory and philosophy. Most poignantly he discusses notions of death within the practice of Zen…
Focus Group – Death Education in Schools