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Church of the Larger Fellowship
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Resources on Death and Loss
May 23, 2003

This coming Monday is marked in the United States as Memorial Day, when gravestones are decorated and services of remembrance are held. This topical post offers opportunity for reflection.

"While the beginning and ending of any single individual existence may seem like starting and ending points, both are subsumed in the broader sweep of a living universe." From a pamphlet from the UUA: Choices in Dying by Ralph Mero, which discusses UU perspectives on death and dying. http://www.uua.org/pamphlet/3100.html

Poetry: Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Dirge" http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/dirge.htm

Prayer for a time of grieving: Kirk Loadman-Copeland
"God of tears and the mysterious silence, God of suffering and God of hope, you have made for everything a season. This is the season of our sorrow, of our grief, and we pray for grace to deal with what seems impossible to deal with." http://www.uua.org/worshipweb/meditations/loadman-copelandkd-prayer01.html

Sermon: More Kind Than Home, More Large Than Earth by the Rev. Judith Meyer
"Can any one of us be in the presence of death
     and not reach for the greater knowing,
          the greater life,
               the greater loving
                    that some part of us insists is real
                         and will sustain us, come what may?"
http://www.uua.org/ga/ga01/2072.html

Sermon: Why You Need To Hear A Sermon About Death by Rev. Dr. Arvid Straube
"Relatively speaking we have so much time and opportunity to use our gifts, to let go of our grasping, to realize our spiritual potential, and the freedom to make those choices, and we need only decide to do that." http://www.eruuf.org/May20_2001.htm

Lessons of Loss
This Between Sundays article summarizes the key concepts of this lifespan Religious Education curriculum. Click on the title of the article to go the curriculum website for more information about the curriculum itself. http://www.clfuu.org/betweensundays/earlychildhood/LessonsLoss.html

From the current issue of Connections, some suggestions for activities
and books for children: http://www.clfuu.org/connections/2003spring/uume.html

Closing with these words from Rev. Straube's sermon:
"What is it that you need to do, in the face of death awareness, to make your life shine in the memory of others, and to die with a satisfied mind, as the old song says?  It¹s probably going to be a different answer for each of you, but there¹s consensus in the great religions of the world that it has something to do with loving and serving and letting of our greed, of our ignorance and our hatred: To awaken.  To awaken to the present moment, when the infinite beauty of the universe is available to you, with all its joy and pain.  So be it."

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Last updated June 12, 2005