Harmony Springs will be hosting its third Death Café on Thursday, October 26th at ACME on Massillon Rd. at 6 PM. We’ve host two previous death cafes and each has offered a vibrant discussion.
The Death Café is a discussion group about death and our (finite) lives. The goal of the café is to increase awareness of death with the view of helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.
The Death Café meetings are confidential and not-for-profit. Our guiding principles are that participants respect one another's beliefs and avoid trying to change others' viewpoints. The Death Café is not a bereavement or grief support group or end-of-life planning session. It’s all about an interesting, unstructured conversation – open and free-flowing with no specific agenda.
The Death Cafe' is an international group (over 2,000 cafes across the world). The Death Cafe concept was started in the United Kingdom by Jon Underwood. He was influenced by the ideas of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, who started holding Cafe Mortel events in France and Switzerland. At these events, people come together in a relaxed, confidential and safe setting to discuss death, drink tea (or your favorite beverage) and eat delicious cake or cookies.
Visit https://www.meetup.com/Green-Death-Cafe/ to read more about the Green death cafe. Visit www.harmonysprings.org for more information about the sponsors Harmony Springs Christian Church.
Numerous articles have been written about the Death Cafe model and its local gatherings:
The New York Times The New Old Age Blog: Death Be Not Decaffeinated
The Boston Globe: Talk about death, hold the sugar
National Public Radio, NPR.org: Death Cafes Breathe Life Into Conversations About Dying
The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio): Facing death, over tea and cake