Trinity Forum Conversations13 Juni 2023

Being, Living, and Dying Well with Lydia Dugdale

Being, Living, and Dying Well with Lydia Dugdale

In the wake of the Black Plague of the middle ages, people cried out for help to die well. What developed over the ensuing centuries was a work called the Ars Moriendi, a book designed to help Christians die well. In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 we were joined by professor and physician Lydia Dugdale to discuss her book The Lost Art of Dying Well which explores the wisdom of the Ars Moriendi:

“The Christian theology about death is one of paradox in many ways. Death is overcome. That is what Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday. But death still has a sting. It still is bitter. It hurts, it rips, a hole in the fabric of our lives. And so we hold in tension this idea that death has this sting, but also is ultimately overcome. So we don't need to accept death, but we need to start by acknowledging finitude.”

Acknowledging our Finitude and Call for Community
Over the course of our conversation, Lydia explains how acknowledging our finitude and investing in our community are the two crucial first steps in preparing to die well. And these steps in preparation for a good death ultimately help us to live well too.

We trust you’ll find much to think about and wrestle with in this conversation, and we hope it inspires you to live wisely and well today.

This podcast is an edited version of an Online Conversation with Lydia recorded on Good Friday in April of 2021. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.

Learn more about Lydia Dugdale.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom, by Lydia Dugdale

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust

Philippe Ariès

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus, by Allen Verhey

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas

On Friendship, by Cicero

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Augustine’s Confessions

The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day

Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Related Conversations:

Strength in the Second Half with Arthur Brooks
Cultivating a Life of Learning with Zena Hitz
Being, Living, and Dying Well with Lydia Dugdale
Hope, Heartbreak, and Meaning with Kate Bowler
The Burden of Living and the and the Goodness of God with Alan Noble
All the Lonely People with Ryan Streeter and Francie Broghammer

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(150)

Practical Wisdom for Chaotic Times, with Alan Noble

How do we live a life of meaning, in a time when so many competing voices tell us who to be, what to want, and how to live? Told to construct meaning for ourselves, we find anxiety instead of wisdom, ...

15 Sep 47min

What Does Citizenship Require of Us? with Russell Moore

The relationship of Christian believers to government has long been fraught, from Jesus’ time to today. The command to love God, our neighbor, even our enemies can flatly contradict the world’s exalta...

4 Sep 51min

Bringing Meaning to Your Work, with Barry Rowan

We want the thousands of hours we work over our lifetime to matter. But how do we make them truly significant? What can infuse our lives, our offices, and our world with meaning?Today’s guest is the b...

18 Aug 47min

Baptizing Our Imaginations, with Mia Chung and Malcolm Guite

The term “baptized imagination” has come to the fore of Christian discussion in recent years, and this recent episode considers what a baptized imagination can actually look like.In the Christian trad...

4 Aug 33min

Practices of Hope: Antidotes to Confusion, Cynicism and Nihilism, with Curt Thompson and David French

We are subjected to the temptations of confusion, cynicism, and nihilism like never before. So many pressures, including new ones, seemingly by the day, push us in these directions. What formative thi...

21 Juli 26min

Beauty + Justice: Why We Need Both, with Makoto and Haejin Fujimura

Beauty is often dismissed as a luxury—something secondary to the urgent work of repair. But what if beauty is not peripheral, but essential to healing what is broken?Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Makoto...

7 Juli 57min

Cultivating Christian Resilience

How can we cultivate a faith that endures and flourishes?Author, Anglican priest, and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Tish Harrison Warren shows us how lasting and beautiful things can take root and grow ...

23 Juni 47min

A Conversation With Ben Sasse

In a culture shaped by distraction, anxiety, and constant noise, how do we focus on what matters most?In this special episode, we're sharing a conversation from a recent Trinity Forum event featuring ...

9 Juni 1h 6min