Laurel Dykstra

Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship Laurel Dykstra

Bury the Dead is a collection of personal encounters with death: stories of Alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer, hospice, suicide, murder, systemic violence, genocide, and war. In this book a teenager tenderly washes her mother's body, a community organizer cries outrage over his blood-soaked comrade, a father builds a coffin for his infant son, martyrs are honored by a former political prisoner, a young scholar's experiences in Palestine shape her reading of the Exodus narrative, and a community of gardeners plant trees at urban-core murder sites. Drawing from sources such as the peace movement, the Catholic Worker, and Occupy, these stories make connections between medicine delivery, labor picket lines, and PICC-lines; between jazz funeral secondlines and the front lines of countless struggles. Part pastoral theology, part movement history, this book powerfully demonstrates that resisting the power of death is at the heart of Christian discipleship, and that in a culture that fears death, we will only find resurrection in facing it.