In Beauty - A Quaker Approach to End-of-Life Care

by Kirsten Backstrom

Overview

This pamphlet reflects Kirsten’s process of seeking the interconnectedness among the different paths in her own spiritual landscape; the immediate, true-to-the heart experience of working with the dying; the sense of shared awe and ordinary life in a Quaker community and meeting for worship; the intimate intensity of encountering her own possible death through illness; the wonder and simplicity of home and family with her partner, Holly Jarvis; and the prayer for meaning in the midst of all the confusing love and loss that makes up life. Where do these paths come together? How does a person “walk in beauty” throughout life and up to death? For Kirsten, writing this pamphlet was as a way of walking, seeking for the beauty and wholeness – on many paths, on one path.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148172529
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	02/05/2014
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #355
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	30
File size:	109 KB

About the Author

Kirsten Backstrom is a member of Multnomah Monthly Meeting in Portland, Oregon. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and her work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and Quaker periodicals including Friends Journal and Friends Bulletin. She is a volunteer at Hopewell House Hospice Center in Portland, where she works in physical care, spiritual care, and bereavement care with patients and their families.

This pamphlet reflects Kirsten’s process of seeking the interconnectedness among the different paths in her own spiritual landscape; the immediate, true-to-the heart experience of working with the dying; the sense of shared awe and ordinary life in a Quaker community and meeting for worship; the intimate intensity of encountering her own possible death through illness; the wonder and simplicity of home and family with her partner, Holly Jarvis; and the prayer for meaning in the midst of all the confusing love and loss that makes up life. Where do these paths come together? How does a person “walk in beauty” throughout life and up to death? For Kirsten, writing this pamphlet was as a way of walking, seeking for the beauty and wholeness – on many paths, on one path.