Sunday Service: Grief, Hope and Reconnecting With Life

Laureen Stokes

Life depends on death. Everything alive and vital depends on the death of other things to survive. This dependence is part of the interconnected web of which we are a part.

And yet often the processes with which we address our physical remains after death remove us from the life to life cycle. Natural organic reduction (or human composting) reconnects back into life. It introduces a new metaphor, one in which our physical remains are transformed into nourishing soil; death is not an end but a transformation that can heal the earth. This homily revisits Laureen Stokes’s architectural graduate project from the lens of a lay chaplain and explores her own journey of grief and loss.

Laureen is a lay chaplain at UCV, and a member of the worship services team. She graduated from UBC’s Master of Architecture program in June 2023 and has spent the last few years considering how to apply her experience as a chaplain – creating rites of passage like memorials and weddings – to the work of being an architect in training.  

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