Podcast appearances and mentions of joe sehee

Death is often considered a morbid and taboo topic, socialised silence teaches us to avoid speaking about it, to cast it in the shadows, to hide it away until we're ultimately faced with it's inevitable presence. But if death is the culminating adventure of the adventure of life, how can we best approach that final instalment and how does the idea of death help us to live life more fully in the now.This episode features Death Doula and Buddhist Chaplain, Annie Whitlocke who has sat supportively and compassionately with those nearing death for 14 years, and the Executive Director of Social Health Australia and the founder of the Green Burial Council in the USA, Joe Sehee.In this episode we discuss:-The role of Social Health Australia is for the ill, dying and grieving,-What spiritual or community companioning is and what it looks like.-The fear of loneliness, the unknown and dying alone.-Why we need community in death and how we've lost that.-The role of a death doula, or elder.-Some of the more emotional experiences she has faced.-That death needs to be done slowly and sacredly.-Wisdom on grieving and how we can lean into grief.-The beauty, spirituality and importance of green burial sites.-Emotional boundaries and keeping the heart open.And…-Josh and Annie share the definitions of love and how death opens one up to love more.-Joe shares his near death experiences.-Annie discusses her successful suicide attempt.-Annie shares her experiences of miscarriage and how that has motivated her.-Non religious or non theistic work in death and dying.-Ram Dass' spiritual companioning work in the documentary Fierce Grace. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to WATCH the full episode @gobehindthemaskFollow us on Instagram and TikTok @gobehindthemaskVisit www.gobehindthemask.com.au for more information and sign up to our ‘Weekly Wisdoms' to begin YOUR journey behind the mask. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you to everybody who has supported the SDI Encounters Podcast, by listening, sharing with a friend, writing a review, or by being a guest. At SDI, we see the podcast as a vital part of our outreach to the public on the merits, value, and necessity of spiritual companionship in the wider culture. Much of our work at SDI is to provide educational media and resources that are for the broader public, to share the healing work we do as spiritual directors and companions to as many people as possible. I view all my work this way – I firmly believe that spiritual companionship should be widely understood and practiced in our culture, and that everyone should have a spiritual companion. In honor of our 100th Episode, I’ve compiled something of a “Best of the Podcast” list. I don’t really think there are “best” episodes – because they’re all amazing for their own reasons! Of course, I believe each episode contains deep wisdom and lived experiences of spiritual companionship. And the ones that might be perceived as lower quality are relative. For example, the first few episodes reveal a bit of age in their technical quality – I was still learning how to put together a podcast and didn’t understand all the timing nuances and audio tricks like volume leveling and noise reduction. But they still are formative for being the first ones we put out there, and I still love them as much for their technical warts as for the universality of spiritual companionship that we are speaking about. With that said, it can be overwhelming if you are new to the podcast to know where to begin. I would really say “Begin with the first one and listen to them all!” but realistically you may not have time for all of that. So, as the host of SDI Encounters, here’s an attempt to present a few categorized “curated” lists. Top Five Episodes based on overall downloads, as of October 22, 2020 EP034 and EP035 – Richard Rohr giving his Keynote on the Universal Christ at the 2018 SDI Conference in St. Louis. Richard Rohr is a superstar, so no surprise here. Let’s just count this as one episode. EP040 – Spiritual Journey – Iona with Frederica Helmiere and Dave Brown. Receive a taste of what could have been with the 2020 Iona Journey, had the pandemic not shut everything down and cancelled all our plans. EP036 – Rewilding and Companioning the Earth – Mary DeJong. I was really moved by the deep heart Mary has for the natural environment, in particular the way she holds grief for environmental degradation with dignity, hope, and purpose. EP033 – Cultivating the Spirituality of Children – Kristen Hobby. This could be a “fish bowl” episode as Frederica and myself offer our own children as guinea pigs to Kristen’s safe and gentle guidance. People must be pretty curious about whether spiritual companionship is something that can be offered to our little ones (hint – it can!). EP063 – Walking as Spiritual Companionship (Pilgrimage in Place). This is one of my favorites as well as one of yours. Jeanette went for a walk through Chicago, with me on the phone, as we companion and pilgrimage together in real-time. If it hadn’t been here, I’d have added it to the “Personal Favorites” for its experimental quality.     “Nuts and Bolts” of Spiritual Direction: EP087 – Non-Theistic Companionship with Joe Sehee. What is spiritual companionship, if “spirit” is not necessarily the ground by which the companioning relationship takes place? The practice is – being fully present and holding space for someone, and respecting aheir agency er to understand and find meaning in their journey, with compassion and non-judgement - Joe approaches his work with deep integrity and purpose. EP071 – Supervision with Lucy Abbott Tucker. Rev. Seifu talks with Lucy about the supervision process, the need to practice accountability as spiritual directors, and how Lucy’s teachings are distilled in her book. EP093 – Bernadette Miles – a refreshing conversation in which Bernie tells her own story of getting into spiritual companionship. Bernie describes her earlier relationship to religion as an “insurance policy for getting into heaven” until one day when a pastor sees her at an icon (a Crucified Christ on the Cross), ponders it for a moment, and says “that wasn’t a very happy ending, was it?” This small encounter opened the floodgates of the reality of Spirit and that relationship with the Divine is truly available to all of us. Any of the Rev. Seifu 1/1 conversations. “My Boss is a Zen Priest” or “Hallmarks/Dimension of a Spiritual Companion” series. In these episodes Rev. Seifu and I explore the modality of spiritual companionship and how this relationship is necessary for anyone on the spiritual journey (which is everyone!).   Examples of real-life companionship (I call these “fish bowl” episodes, because you get to hear actual examples of companionship, rather than talking about it) EP013 – Dani Forbess on Embodied Spirituality – I opened up about my own wrestling with how I relate to my Christianity in a way that sounded somewhat heretical. Dani held the space for me to do so gently and without judgement. EP075 – sharing poetry with Dave Brown. This one was really fun – Dave starts by sharing about how a poem itself can be a spiritual companion to us. Then he and I go back and forth sharing some of our favorite poems in a “Poetry Battle” (or if that’s too militaristic, how about a “Poetry Dance”?) EP070 – Dreamwork Session with Amy Curran – In the previous EP069 episode, Amy and I do the interview format about her spiritual companionship practice as a Dreamworker. But in this episode I offered one of my own dreams and we do real-time dreamwork together. If you have ever been interested in dreams or dream interpretation, this episode is a must-listen! EP081 – Nonviolent Communication with Pam Winthrop Lauer: I brought my inner critic for an open and vulnerable conversation with Pam, who adeptly held the sacred space for me to do so, while practicing the tenets of Nonviolent Communication to help hold the safe space and to disarm my inner critic.   Personal “Favorites” – I don’t really have favorites, but there are some where the podcast interview format gets interrupted in creative ways. EP065 – SDI Staff reading the April 2020 Issue of Listen - We tried to do something creative with the podcast format and I really love how it turned out! EP042 – if you want to hear Frederica and myself cracking up multiple times in a very unprofessional way, here you go. Hidden Gems – a couple of episodes in which a deeper Truth or bit of wisdom is revealed, that you might have missed if you just read the Title and moved on! EP089 – Accountability – This is a Hallmarks of Spiritual Companionship conversation I had recently with Reverend Seifu about the need for spiritual directors to seek supervision and to hold their practice as professionally as possible. What the process of accountability does is it puts our very identity as spiritual companions under the microscope. Ultimately we learn to let go of the need to direct, we trust the person we are companioning, the seeker, to find their own direction, to trust their hearts, to find and walk the path that is put before them. EP077 – Sexuality and Spiritual Companionship with Karen Erlichman: I just appreciate the real groundedness that Karen has as a spiritual companion. She talks frankly and plainly about sexuality as it pertains to spirituality – the beauty and the traumas and the potential pitfalls. And the dissolution of any sort of boundary or taboo around what is considered “spiritual” and what is not.

This week’s episode is a conversation I had about companionship with Joe Sehee. I very intentionally refer to ‘companionship’ here, as Joe approaches this work from a non-theistic, non-religious perspective. We discuss topics around finding meaning and universality in suffering, human connection, using silence to be in conversation, compassion fatigue, and remembering to have a sense of humor. Talking with Joe, I thought of the famous line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. At SDI, we talk about the healing modality of spiritual companionship. You can call it companionship, or spiritual direction, guidance, friendship. Call it what you like – it’s about the relationship, the listening work, and the meaningful story of the others we companion. Joe Sehee is the Executive Officer of Social Health Australia based in Melbourne. Social Health Australia brings forward innovative approaches to companioning people in crisis and combating the growing problems of social isolation and loneliness. Their mission is to make times of transition, uncertainty and loss not only less debilitating, but also opportunities for building resilience and creating community.Joe has a wide range of experience as a non-theistic spiritual director and pastoral caregiver including serving four years as Associate Director of Campus Ministry at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco. A Peabody Award-winning journalist, Joe is founder of the Green Burial Council, director of EarthFunerals, chairman of the Bendoc Cemetery Trust and a senior fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program. --- Support for this podcast comes from the Siena Retreat Center. Are you passionate about the spiritual growth and transformation that comes from the practice of spiritual guidance? Siena Retreat Center, located on Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, is seeking an experienced leader in the area of spiritual companioning. The full-time position of Spiritual Guidance Coordinator involves the collaborative leadership of the Center’s Two-Year Spiritual Guidance Training Program. We invite you to explore the job description at www.sienaretreatcenter.org.

Honor the dead. Heal the living. Invite in the divine. What a beautiful mission statement, and one adopted by the Green Burial Council, which was founded by my guest Joe Sehee. Only a former Jesuit lay minister and street entertainer would come up with something that heartfelt, which is why Joe is such an interesting guest. In Part One, he and I discussed funeral industry greenwashing and ways we consumers can avoid getting duped. In Part Two you’ll learn about the difference between a natural, green, and conversation burial ground, and some lessons we both learned while working for IBM. It seems the funeral industry, like the computer industry before it, is being dragged forward…often kicking and screaming…into what Joe calls an “End of life revolution." What are those forces? What revolution? Well listen in, and you’ll find out! But first, we pick up where we left off last time, discussing the origins of that mysterious mix we call embalming fluid. Drink up me lads and lassies, on Part Two of my interview with the founder of the Green Burial Council, Joe Sehee. 

You pick up a bottle of laundry detergent at the grocery store, and it's labeled “green” and is twice the price of regular detergent. But is it really safer for the environment? Often we just don’t know. Well it turns out green standards for the funeral industry are just as murky and unregulated, and there are some who will sell you and an expensive green funeral that really isn’t…a practice called “greenwashing.” My guest believed consumers should have access to objective information, so he founded the Green Burial Council, which established rigorous green standards for cemeteries who truly want to operate in an environmentally conscious way. Today the GBC, an international organization, protects consumers like you and me from greenwashing and gives legitimate green cemetery operators an opportunity to voluntarily become GBC certified, which many have. I caught up with Joe in Australia where he and his family live. Joe starts our time together by taking us on a virtual tour of a natural cemetery, and wrap up with a lively discussion about embalming fluid. Salute! Please join me for Part One of my interview with Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council. 

Shari Wolf and Joe Sehee talk to Char Barrett of A Sacred Moment. This second episode on home funerals focuses on business aspects, frequently asked questions and best practices.

Shari Wolf and Joe Sehee talk to Char Barrett of A Sacred Moment. They discuss funeral directors’ role in home funerals and how funeral homes can benefit from offering more of this service.

Shari Wolf and Joe Sehee discuss the perceived risks when preserving a body while using green burial practices. They alsodiscuss the importance of knowing what is “green” and what is not.