Being, Living, and Dying Well with Lydia Dugdale

Trinity Forum Conversations

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.