This Issue

Our feature article on palliative care is one that intends to stimulate thought, conversation and action.

Before I worked with our feature, I had never heard of a Death Café. It’s a gathering where people “drink tea, eat cake and discuss death.” The aim is to increase awareness of death to help people make the most of their finite lives.

I don’t expect I’ll drop that idea into many conversations. I know that much of the time most of us avoid conversations about death, perhaps hoping somehow that death will never touch us or those we love.

However, hosting a Death Café might be something one of our congregations will do to assist people who are coming to the end of their lives. And I’ll file it away in my memory with the possibility that it might become more than an idea in a magazine.

Spiritual health practitioner Doug Koop has provided us with an article that is well worth reading, pondering, discussing and acting upon as he explores the topic through the eyes of “Bob” a 52-year-old, who, with trepidation in his step, approaches the palliative care ward where he has the opportunity to spend more time with his aging and ailing mother.

We face Bob’s fears and discover a process where a relationship of trust, commitment and tenderness is established so that the quality of whatever life remains is enhanced.

Glimpses

If our feature leaves you pondering the afterlife, “Hell” revisited, p. 15, may change your outlook.

Beyond fumbling footsteps, p. 9, is about one man’s journey with cancer that invites each of us forward in the journey of faith where God has work for us to do.

Bishop Elaine Sauer expands the conversation about women in leadership in the church through her column Insight into a woman’s world, p. 27.

Our synod sections are again filled with examples of our church In Mission for Others. Trinity Community Mural unveiled, p. 19 and It feels like home to me, p. 28 are two examples.

Kenn Ward, Editor