Dr Sarah Kerr, PhD
The Centre for Sacred Deathcare
The Centre for Sacred Deathcare
Australian Sacred Deathcare Learning Series
Sydney & Melbourne, May 2024
Dr Sarah Kerr, PhD
The Centre for Sacred Deathcare
Australian Sacred Deathcare Learning Series
Sydney & Melbourne, May 2024
We hope to host Sarah again in 2026
For more information, subscribe to the Ending Well newsletter
We hope to host Sarah again in 2026. For more information, subscribe to the Ending Well newsletter.
An Evening Talk
Maps, Myths and Meanings:
A spiritual geography of death and loss
Sarah gave an Evening Talk on death as more than just a physical experience. Death is a transformational soul-journey, for the dying person and for those who love them. Dominant culture primarily views death as the end of the physical body, and dying as a medical event. This approach ignores the very real, non-physical, spiritual and relational dynamics that unfold as body and soul separate. No wonder we have trouble navigating death well: we’re operating from an incomplete map.
Sarah shared a story from the Ojibwa people of the Great Lakes region and the northern plains of Canada/USA that provides a powerful map.
The Ojibwa understanding is that when we die, we find ourselves on the beach of a vast lake. Here we see the footprints of those who have died before us—people who have crossed the lake, leaving the Village of the Living and journeying to the Village of the Dead.
The newly dead cannot make that journey alone, however. They need help from both sides. Those in the Village of the Living must build for their dead a canoe out of love to propel out into the lake with the energy of our grief.
Those in the Village of the Dead reach out and receive that canoe, using the energy of their joy to pull it towards them, celebrating the person’s arrival with the same intensity as the living mourn the person’s departure.
1-day Practical Skills Training
Ritual Healing at the Deathbed:
Soul-support for immediately before, during, and after the last breath
Sarah led us through a 1-day participatory workshop, teaching us the foundational principles of ritual healing and introducing simple yet powerful rituals for different stages of the deathbed experience.
In times of grief and loss, rituals help people connect with themselves, with each other, and with the healing powers of nature, love, and lineage. Meaningful rituals can help dying people and their families navigate the difficult changes that happen at end-of-life. Death reconfigures the relationships between the living, the dying, and the dead, and rituals help our souls integrate these changes so we can move forward in the new reality.
Sacred deathcare rituals are rooted in a spiritual-but-not-religious framework, and can be easily adapted to fit other spiritual or secular value systems.
Weekend Workshop
Across the Veil Constellations:
Transformative ritual for healing and learning
This was an experiential 2-day ritual practice that created a space for healing around unresolved grief, estrangement before death, abortion or miscarriage, pet death, questions around Voluntary Assisted Dying, and many other deathly questions and situations.
Participants in the Across the Veil constellations described a deepening relationship with the dying process, and the weekend workshop supported an ‘easing into’ and reassurance about death and dying. Across the Veil Constellations participants described having a greater ‘felt experience’ of the afterlife. The weekend workshop also helped bring some peace and resolution to relationships with death and dead people.
For a full explanation of Across the Veil Constellations, see Dr Sarah Kerr’s YouTube playlist, from a Zoom webinar she delivered describing how Across the Veil Constellations work.
