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Embrace Aging: Supporting Our Parents

Joel Olah
Executive Director, Aging Resources of Central Iowa13282

Moderator: Maryalice Larson
AARP Iowa Executive Council

Tuesday, February 23, 7:00 p.m.
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center, Drake University
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Dr. Olah has been with Aging Resources of Central Iowa for 21 years, managing a comprehensive home and community-based service delivery system for more than 125,000 older adults in central Iowa.

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Larson has a strong background in health services management, and hold a Master of Arts in Mental Health Nursing from the University of Iowa.

Video of the Lecture

Continuing education credit is available for nurses and other healthcare professionals who attend this event. It is approved by Iowa Board of Nursing Provider #302, HCI Care Services for 0.15 CEUs or 1.5 contact hours of continuing education.

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02/11/2015: Spring Community Interfaith Dialogue

Moderator:Norma Hirsch
  • Norma Hirsch, Professor of Osteopathic Medicine
    at Des Moines University
Panelists:
  • Robert Aubrey, Chaplin (Retired); Unity Point and Broadlawns
  • David Kaufman, Rabbi, Temple B’nai Jeshurun
  • Yogesh Shah, Associate Dean, Des Moines University

Thursday, February 11, 7:00 p.m.
Iles Funeral Homes, Dunn’s Chapel
2121 Grand Ave, Des Moines

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How do the religions of the world understand death and dying? What rituals do they practice as preparation for death and in response to death? What effects has the “medicalization of death” had on these traditional understandings and practices? And what does the medical community need to know about traditional religious theologies and rituals related to death and dying?

The Comparison Project’s Community Interfaith Dialogue will explore these questions from the perspectives of Judaism, Catholicism, and Buddhism. Our moderator and panelists will focus particularly on the tensions between traditional theologies and rituals of death and the way in which death has increasingly become the domain of medicine and law. There will be ample time for questions from the audience.

Continuing education credit is available for nurses and other healthcare professionals who attend this event. It is approved by Iowa Board of Nursing Provider #302, HCI Care Services for 0.15 CEUs or 1.5 contact hours of continuing education.

The video from the panel can be viewed here.

Rabbi_K_clippedAviary Photo_130979741109163158Dr.%20Y.%20Shah%202013

 

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Calvin Community: Healthy Aging and Brain Wellness

Robert BenderDr_-Bender-2013
Geriatric/Dementia Specialist, Broadlawns Medical Center

Moderator: Mary Mincer Hansen
Co-Chair, Age Friendly Great Des Moines Health Committee

Tuesday, January 26, 7:00 p.m.
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center, Drake University
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It’s a commonplace that physical exercise is an important element of healthy aging. What is less well recognized is the benefit of exercising your brain.

According to Dr. Bender, combining physical exercise and cognitive activity along with other factors such as diet, meditation, and medication can help to retard the progression of Alzheimer’s and other dementia related diseases. He notes that modern science has revealed that humans “get new brain cells every day until the day we die.”

Dr. Bender, who has practiced as a geriatrician for more than 30 years, will share what modern medicine has taught about aging well, along with some of the insights he has gained from his work in the Mather Brain Gymnasium at Broadlawns.

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Dr. Mincer Hansen is the former Director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. Dr. Mincer Hansen has served in many national positions and held many roles involving public health.

Continuing education credit is available through HCI Care Services for nurses and other healthcare professionals.

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View the video recording of the event

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12/03/2015: Fall Interfaith Dialogue

Moderator:Norma Hirsch
  • Norma Hirsch, Professor of Osteopathic Medicine
    at Des Moines University
Panelists:
  • Sayeed Hussain, Pediatrician, West Des Moines Children’s Clinic
  • Pramod Mahajan, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Drake University
  • You Bin, Fulbright Visiting Scholar of Religion, Minzu University of China
  • Joseph Moravec, Professor of Theology and Philosophy, Mercy College

Thursday, December 3, 7:00 p.m.
Iles Funeral Homes, Dunn’s Chapel
2121 Grand Ave, Des Moines

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How do the religions of the world understand death and dying? What rituals do they practice as preparation for death and in response to death? What effects has the “medicalization of death” had on these traditional understandings and practices? And what does the medical community need to know about traditional religious theologies and rituals related to death and dying?

The Comparison Project’s Community Interfaith Dialogue will explore these questions from the perspectives of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Chinese Religion. Our moderator and panelists will focus particularly on the tensions between traditional theologies and rituals of death and the way in which death has increasingly become the domain of medicine and law. There will be ample time for questions from the audience.

Videos:
Dialogue
Questions

Pramod Mahajan

Joseph MoravecSayeed HussainYouBin

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11/19/2015: Christians Encounter Death: Tradition’s Ambivalent Legacies

Lucy BregmanLucy5

Professor of Religion, Temple University

Thursday, November 19, 7:00 p.m.
Pomerantz Stage, Olmsted Center, Drake University

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The central focus for Christians has been on the death of Jesus Christ; it is his dying and death and resurrection that have shaped what Christians have believed, taught, and hoped. In this lecture, some of the implications and limits of this model for death will be brought to light. While we recognize enormous diversity in practice and actual experiences of Christians, some issues persist in the way this tradition has understood how death fits within the totality of human existence.

Lucy Bregman has been at Temple University since 1974 and is the author of several books on death and dying, including Death in the Midst of Life, Beyond Silence and Denial, and Preaching Death. She has also chaired the American Academy of Religion’s program unit on Death, Dying and Beyond.

To listen to the audio of the lecture:

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10/29/2015: La migración y el culto a la Santa Muerte: asirse a lo que sea (“Migration and the Cult of Santa Muerte: Hanging onto Whatever”)

Eduardo GonzálezIMG_3729

Research Professor, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Guadalajara

 

Thursday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center, Drake University

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The “cult of Santa Muerte” (Saint Death) is the fastest growing and most prominent religious movement in Mexico today. Prof. González’s Comparison Project lecture explores the worship of Santa Muerte in the city of Guadalajara, focusing both on the general ways in which the church of Santa Muerte offers “a place for everyone” and on the specific ways in which Santa Muerte serves the needs of migrants attempting the crossing to the United States.

Eduardo González Velázquez is is a Research Professor at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. He won the Jalisco Journalism Award in 2009 and 2007 in the category of reporting and writing respectively. He has published thirty articles and book chapters, including “Ciudadanos a la Mitad.” His current area of research is US-Mexico migration.

View Gonzalez’s PPT and listen to his lecture.  

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10/08/2015: Death and Dying in Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhist Monks from Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery.
Tibetan Buddhist Monks from Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery.

Tibetan Buddhist Monks from the Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery

Thursday, October 8, 7:00 p.m.
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center, Drake University

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What is death and dying in Tibetan Buddhism? Join us, as seven Tibetan Buddhist monks offer a presentation on death and dying as well as a demonstration of prayers, rituals, and dances related to death and dying. In particular, the monks will perform “Chod,” a ritual meditation on death to cut away attachments, and “Skeleton Dance,” a ritual dance of death to cultivate mindfulness of impermanence.

Seven monks from Labrang Tashikyil Monastery in Dehra Dun, India are touring the United States in 2015-16 to teach dharma, educate the public about the culture and religion of Tibet, and to raise funds for their monastery. The tour is being coordinated by the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the third such tour by the monastery.

View the monks’s powerpoint and hear their presentation

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09/17/2015: How We Die: Evaluation, Reflection, Prescription

Zagoren picDr. Allen Zagoren, DO, MPA, FACOS, FACN
Associate Professor of Public Administration in the College of Business and Public Administration, Drake University

Thursday, September 17th
Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center, Drake University

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Dr. Zagoren’s Comparison Project presentation takes the audience on a journey through humanity’s continued confrontation with death, with an emphasis on our attempts to prolong the inevitable.  Along the way, the audience will gaze at western society’s attempt to define and depict the dying process, inspect the role that human technology has played in redefining and ultimately confusing the end of life, and look out at the potential impact of future technology.  Influenced by the bestselling book How We Die by Sherwin Nuland, Dr. Zagoren’s presentation, like Nuland’s, is grounded in a physician’s observations.  But Dr. Zagoren’s presentation travels beyond medicine and science to art and music, underscoring the central mystery that is our death. 

Dr. Allen Zagoren is Associate Professor of Public Administration in the College of Business and Public Administration at Drake University, where he also serves as Chairperson of the Department of Management and Public Administration and the Graduate Curriculum Committee.  He is a trained General And Trauma Surgeon with subspecialty training in Interventional Nutrition and Wound Healing.  He currently serves as the Medical Director of the Wound Healing Collaborative at Unity Point Health System, Central Iowa.  Dr. Zagoren’s areas of expertise include health education in health policy and bio-ethics.

Dr. Zagoren’s powerpoint and audio

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Student Comparisons and Evaluations (S15)

Professor Knepper’s Spring 2105 Philosophy of Religion course looked at discourses of ineffability in Jewish mysticism and Muslim mysticism (as well as a little Zen Buddhism).  In their final papers students were asked to describe and compare several of these discourses, then both to explain their commonalities and differences and to evaluate the general claim that ultimate beings and/or experiences are ineffable. Below are some of their final papers:

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04/30/2015: Concluding Comparisons

Tim Knepper and Leah Kalmanson,
Directors of The Comparison Project, Drake University professors of philosophy and religion.

April 30, 7 p.m., Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center

KalmansonKnepper

In the final event of its 2013-2015 series on “religion beyond words,” The Comparison Project’s directors, Tim Knepper and Leah Kalmanson, will compare over the programming of the last two years, raising philosophical questions of meaning, value, and truth about ineffability in comparative religious perspective. Knepper and Kalmanson will explore the diversities of ineffability in nine religious traditions as well as the arts and literature, focusing on the distinctive means by which humans speak about things they say cannot be spoken. Ultimately, Knepper and Kalmanson will also assess the ends toward which ineffability has been deployed in the practice and study of religion.

Timothy Knepper is associate professor of philosophy and religion at Drake University. He teaches and publishes in the philosophy of religion, comparative religion, late ancient Neoplatonism, and mystical discourse. He is the author of books on the future of the philosophy of religion (The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave, 2013) and the sixth-century Christian mystic known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Negating Negation, Wipf & Stock, 2014).

Leah Kalmanson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Drake University. She researches and teaches in the fields of Asian and comparative philosophy, continental philosophy, and postcolonial theory. She has published the co-edited volumes Confucianism in Context (SUNY 2010), Levinas and Asian Thought (Duquesne 2013), and Buddhist Responses to Globalization (Lexington 2014).

 

 

*Note about Kalmanson’s presentation: Kalmanson is indebted to works by Tomoko Masuzawa and Jason Ānanda Josephson (listed below) for her discussion of the history of the term “religion” in Europe. Her quotations in the Hakuseki-Sidotti exchange are taken (at times with slight modification) from the Josephson source.

  • Josephson, Jason Ānanda. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
  • Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.