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The Dance of Death

A 6-week, Lenten series devoted to meditations on death in art, music, poetry, literature, fashion, philosophy and theology. In this intense time of pandemic and lockdown we have all come face to face with uncertainty, finitude and mortality in quite confrontative ways. Socrates said that to “philosophize is to learn how to die.” This lent we are jumping into philosophy, theology and the arts to think about death and find some life in the face of it.
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Life

Who is happier?  The one who lives or the one who dies?  This is a paraphrase of Socrates' last words.  The truth is, we just don't know how to answer this question.  Neither did Socrates.  What we do know is that life is about learning how to die, and the attitude in which we approach death.  What if living well means facing death in ways we never thought possible or pleasant?

Death

Is Death to be feared?  The philosophers say no.  Yet, death is something we crave to nail down precisely because there is so much fear.  Our addiction to know forces us into shaping narratives about death and post death. But what if our disregard for perfect knowledge affords us a peace and creativity in life we didn't know was attainable?

Dancing

No one escapes death.  It is the one certainty we are all assured and the one thing that connects us all.  But what if we danced with death rather than be defeated by it?  What if our ideas, fear and cheers about death gave way to a life dance so beautifully absurd that it was the real way to honor death, and maybe even cheat it?

6-Week Outline

This Lenten season death is on offer

You’ve given up chocolate, fasted technology and social media, flirted with atheism and now it’s time to dance. Join us every Sunday in Lent for a dance with death. Each week you will get a reflective mix of art, poetry and music all focused on the biggest dance of all, the Danse Macabre. Dead philosophers will speak their eulogies and elegies and dry bones will shimmy; musicians will shake, rattle and roll their funeral hymns to the great unknowns; and artists will help us face down the Grim Reaper.

What you can expect

  • The first session drops Sunday, March 6th.
  • A new session will drop each Sunday, cultimating in our final session on Palm Sunday, April 10th, which will be hosted LIVE on zoom. The recording will be posted for those who can't make it.
  • There are no assignments, but you can expect sessions packed with content as well as recommended reading and resources.
  • Listen to our podcast on The Dance of Death here.

Barry Taylor and Maria French

Co-Directors and Co-Creators of H&Co, Barry and Maria are best friends, who are post Christian thinkers and writers-pushing through constructs of traditional notions of belief and engaging all the (Im)possibilities that await as we dis-entangle and dis-entwine from all that once was.

“One night I was dancing with a lady in black.  Wearing black silk gloves and a black silk hat. She looked at me longing with black velvet eyes. She gazed at me strange all cunning and wise. I saw the flesh just fall off her bones. The eyes in her skull was burning like coals.  Lord, have mercy, fire and brimstone. I was dancing with Mistress D.”

-The Rolling Stones

The Dance of Death

A 6-week, Lenten series devoted to mediations on death in art, music, poetry, literature, fashion, philosophy and theology.

$29.00 USD