How to Create Altars that Alter the Dying Process

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How to Create Altars that Alter the Dying Process:  Using Everyday Items to Integrate Fear, Increase Acceptance and Instill Presence

This evening follows Stories at the Threshold: An Hour with Melody LeBaron, our conversation with her and Aditi on Wednesday, September 16. That hour opened the questions about how we can work with the space in the room when someone is dying. This one puts them directly in your hands. You are welcome here whether or not you joined us for the first gathering.

Death is part of the natural cycle of life, and dying is a rite of passage for everyone involved. We spend time, attention, money, and effort preparing ourselves and creating beautiful environments for other life passages: birth, college, marriage, big birthdays, retirements. But we don't know how to create an optimal environment for our final graduation from this life.

At Emberlight we practice ways to embrace death and support one another with loving presence. Sometimes that practice looks like sitting at a bedside. Sometimes it looks like tending the room itself, so the space can hold what the people in it cannot yet carry alone.

This workshop is for the curious and courageous, those who want to attend death well, helping all involved to release their fears of death and up-level their capacity for presence as they move toward acceptance. When we partner with the multi-layered process of dying, as well as with the room, death can happen with so much more grace and ease.

Melody LeBaron will show you how to build an altar from what is already in the house. A photograph. A bowl of water. A stone carried home from somewhere that mattered. Everyday items, arranged with conscious intention, become a place where fear can be set down and presence can gather. We will look at how our surroundings shape what happens in a dying season, practice choosing and placing objects, and leave with an approach you can bring to your own home, a loved one's room, or a bedside you are already tending.

Please bring a few small items that you might want to use on your own Life Completion Altar, such as:

• who you are leaving: images/photos of your most important relationships 

• what you are leaving behind: items that represent your most important achievements (family, work, volunteer, your own inner work)

• what connected you to this earth: items from nature that represent something special to you (rocks, shells, pinecones, flowers, leaves, etc.)

If you are joining us on Zoom, you can have these gathered with you as you sit down to join.

Two ways to join. You may be with us in person in the Lighthouse, or you may join by live stream on Zoom from wherever you are. Please select your option when you register. Everyone who registers receives the recording afterward.

Where to meet. Those joining in person will gather in the Lighthouse, our education and gathering space on the Emberlight campus at 83 Sanctuary Road, Swannanoa, NC 28778. Those joining online will receive the Zoom link by email.

Melody will also have copies of her Transforming Death: Creating Sacred Space for the Dying available to purchase and sign.

About Melody LeBaron. Melody is the author of Transforming Death: Creating Sacred Space for the Dying, the first book of its kind to explore how it is possible to partner with nature and the built environment to support the multi-layered processes of death and grief. Her diverse skills include building communities of empowered women, coaching people through life transitions, professional organizing, Feng Shui, and Space Clearing, with over 30 years of experience supporting the dying and their caregivers. Her work rises from a deep understanding of how our surroundings affect us. Melody has learned that when we partner with the environment, with conscious intention, we can better support any transformative process, including dying. She has midwifed the conscious death of 14 close loved ones and countless clients, developing practical approaches to move through the layers of grief, into acceptance, expansion and grace.

This is a pay-what-you-can event, with a suggested contribution. All proceeds benefit Emberlight. We invite you to give what feels right for you, and we would love to welcome you into this circle whatever the amount.

Please note that event tickets are non-refundable, except in the case that Emberlight cancels the event.