#32 Stephen Jenkinson - Elderhood and the Absence of Culture

Today my guest is Stephen Jenkinson.

Stephen is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house for the skills of deep living and making human culture. It is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, working for a time ​yet to come.​

Stephen worked for many years in the “death trade”, helping people come to terms with their illnesses in a culture that has no real relationship with the death and dying process. He is a trained Harvard theologian and writes urgently and eloquently about how to create culture that relates to the cycles of life and death (Die Wise). His latest book, Come of Age, grapples with the paradox of elderhood in North America: “we are awash in the aged and yet somehow lacking in wisdom; we relegate senior citizens to the corner of the house while simultaneously heralding them as sage elders simply by virtue of their age.”

Stephen is currently on the Nights of Grief and Mystery Tour.

Find out if he’s in your town. If so, do yourself a favor.