Welcome to the Good Faith Podcast on your host, Curtis Chang, and the Good Faith Podcast

is where friends who follow Jesus help each other make sense of this world.

Now last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and I attended my church service and I went up to

my pastor who applied ashes on my forehead and she proclaimed to me, ashes to ashes, dust

to dust, you are dust and dust you shall return.

In other words, I was being reminded that I am a mortal being and that at some point

probably sooner than I may even imagine I will inevitably die and this practice of ashes being

applied on Ash Wednesday it goes back to the medieval ages and it's meant to symbolize that

we as Christians are meant to carry with us to bear and our very being awareness of our mortality

and it reflects an important truth in the biblical tradition that mortality itself is an important

spiritual compass for Christians that God's designed us to make sense of the world through our

relationship with death. And so the question came to my mind, how are we doing as Christians in

using this compass of mortality to navigate today's culture? Have we retained the guidance

that's present in mortality or are we at risk of losing this tool, losing this wisdom?

And so on this week after Ash and Wednesday and as we begin the season of Lent,

I thought it would be helpful to ask this question about our relationship to death and are we

holding it and bearing it as a spiritual compass as intended? And so to have that conversation,

I've invited my friend Dr. Lydia Doug Dale. Lydia is professor at Columbia University Medical School

and she's a national thought leader in medical ethics, especially on end of life issues.

She's the author of a book, a really wonderful book called The Lost Art of Dying,

which I highly recommend in which I'm sure we'll talk about in today's podcast. So,

Lydia, welcome to good day. Thank you, Curtis. It's great to join you.

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