Reflections on the Sacred Gateway

L-R: Marianne and Dennis Dietzel and Linda Bergh

SACRED GATEWAY CONFERENCE: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying, and the Journey Beyond.

The 2020 conference is in Detroit, April 16-19; go to anthroposophy.org/sacredgateway for details. This article followed on the April 2019 gathering in Harlemville NY

by Dennis and Marianne Dietzel and Linda Bergh

In November 1996 when our daughters Kirsten Bergh and Nina Dietzel, attending Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in Harlemville, NY, died in a car accident, community members came forward to hold us all. A vigil held in a family home of a classmate and friend of the girls became the place where community could gather as sacred space to hold life and death in light and love during this most challenging and unknown time.

April 2019, twenty-two years later, at the Sacred Gateway Conference held in the same community, we, the parents of the girls, were asked to share this story as a way of showing what was created in that time as a deathcaring community. From the beginning we knew this story had to be told from the perspective of the whole community and with music. An early element that came to Linda was a drum beat that would move with the heart beat of the story. We chose to tell the story by having the actual community members involved write their remembrance. We then created a script that told the story so the conference audience could go on that journey. The speakers sat in the center of a theatre in the round, each standing to speak their remembrances of that time before and during the accident, and at the vigil. Drumming, saxophone, singing, and lyre music accompanied the story as it unfolded, like a tapestry being woven by a community of weavers.

It was through the re-telling of the “tragedy” in this way, that it became so clear how Love was a container that helped hold grief and transformed death into Light through the giving of each individual. Here is one person’s remembrance of the vigil:

“Yet in all the awfulness of the moment of walking in to see Kirsten and Nina’s bodies what I found was a welcoming warm space. Grief and shock were everywhere in the room, but it was not a scary place. This community of people that I hardly knew created a space where I felt welcomed and simply allowed to be with my friends’ bodies with no expectations. I am so grateful for the space that was created. Food, candles, gentle quiet, music, warm hugs, crying together. With the sudden nature of these deaths, the vigil gave me the space and time to say good-bye and be with Kirsten and Nina’s spirits.

“I spent hours just being there next to the wooden coffins in the middle of the living room. I stroked their hair, sang to them, talked to them and I was made to feel that this was normal and okay, that grieving and death can be part of community life. I believe my grief process was greatly impacted by the way this community held space for the deaths of my dear friends. Thank you!” — M.O.B

After this “Container of Community” presentation on Saturday morning of the conference, people shared that this experience was life-opening for them and that it deepened their understanding of how this threshold can be held, even in a most challenging situation. People also shared that it opened up their understanding of their own life stories in new and surprising ways. This kind of lifestorytelling allowed a moment of being with an experience in such a deep and heartfelt way, that we want to further explore this way of learning from each other.

We are grateful to the Anthroposophical Society for supporting this conference on conscious dying, and to the planning committee for having the trust in us to attempt such a new form of sharing.

From Linda’s journal entry:

Love was the container created here twenty two years ago and re-created here last Saturday. We knew it began with a drum. We knew it had to be in the round with a center. We knew it had to be the the words of the very people who were here and those who came. We knew there had to be a saxophone. Then a song came through Dennis and the Script came together. And the voices filled the space circled by a hundred plus witnesses to the deed of the sharing. Of holding light and space after the death of our girls.

Responses of conference participants:

You have given me something real that helps me understand this sacred threshold. You have opened a door for me—beyond fear I am changed by this and I don’t know how. It was the center of this weekend for me— it is what I take home. The heartbeat of love—I can still feel it beating.

L-R: Colleen Shetland, Marianne Dietzel, Joan Almon

by Dwight Ebaugh

The second Sacred Gateway conference was held in Harlemville, NY, on the last weekend of April 2019. The first occurred one year ago in Sacramento. I was fortunate to be able to attend that first conference and it inspired me to attend this year’s conference. I look forward to a third conference next year in the midwest region. [April 16-19, 2020, in Detroit, MI.]

The weather was gray, cold, windy, and rainy. In bright contrast to the gloomy weather, spring growth and colors were peeking out and the mood of the gathering was warm and upbeat. We came together in a positive spirit of exploration, of brotherhood/sisterhood, of contemplation, and of striving to understand the “sacred journey” from physical incarnation through death into the spiritual realm. I sensed no pall of fear surrounding this journey. Rather, there was an inner peace that we all seemed to draw from our anthroposophical foundations, our commitment to the wisdom of Rudolph Steiner. I have a distinct memory of Julia Polter’s opening keynote address containing words to the effect that “Rudolf Steiner is always in my thoughts.”

The conference consisted of presentations in which we all participated, and concurrent breakout sessions. Many of us lamented that we were unable to attend all of the compelling alternatives.

Far and away the most powerful full-group session of the conference was a long Saturday morning session, “Container of Community,” led by Linda Bergh and Dennis and Marianne Dietzel, and described above: the recounting of the sudden and catastrophic death of Nina Dietzel, the daughter of Dennis and Marianne Dietzel, and Kirsten Bergh, the daughter of Linda Bergh. We all learned that the girls were best and inseparable friends in the Minneapolis area; that they chose to spend a high school year at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf school in Harlemville; that they lived with a local family and were promptly befriended by the entire school; and that by Thanksgiving time when Linda Bergh came to visit, the girls were part of the close-knit community. On the Friday after Thanksgiving the girls died in an automobile accident as a result of “black ice” on the roadway being traveled by Kirsten, Nina, and Kirsten’s mother. The girls died instantly. Linda Bergh survived but required extensive surgery to repair her broken body.

We were all immersed in this event at the conference and the most remarkable thing emerged. While we could all feel the tragedy and while we all experienced the emotion of the loss with tears streaming from our eyes, we also found solace, redemption, and meaning in the tragedy. By Sunday morning’s plenum, this finding was openly shared and expressed.

After the “Container of Community,” I participated in a breakout session with Ben Matlock, “When Active Dying Begins—What To Do?” I came to the conference in search of practical information and it was abundant in this session. I had to forego “Hands-On Body Care,” “Biography and Social Art—Preparation for Dying and Beyond,” and “Befriending Death.” Later I enjoyed David Schwartz’s “Aging and Dying Well,” but had to forego “Vigil Room and Hearth-Holders,” “Journeying Between Death and Rebirth,” and “Creating Death Caring Communities.” The striking thing about David’s presentation was the insight that our elder years as human beings are now being viewed as a developmental stage not merely as a period of degeneration following the productive years. This was good news to my seventy-three-year-old ears.

“Reading for the Dead” with Joanna Carey was like paying a visit to someone else’s study group, an experience that I rarely have, and I picked up some pointers. On the final day I experienced “The Enigma of Suffering: Meeting our Humanity at the Threshold” with Dr. Steven Johnson, but missed “Contemplation and Inner Development for Connecting with the Dead,” “Connecting with Our Loved Ones Through Nature and Art,” and “Green Burial: a Natural Return to the Earth.” Mornings there was the option of singing sessions with Meaghan Witri or eurythmy sessions with Karen Derreumaux. The singing sessions were a pure delight.

by Sandra LaGrega

I felt from the beginning of the planning for the conference that we were being led by spiritual beings, especially Nina Dietzel and Kirsten Bergh. Trying to share the “pageant” with others, on my return home, I can only say that it was a deeply personal as well as cosmic event. As another participant said, “a deed was done.” Kirsten and Nina were so young when they died; their “unused forces” are still reverberating, showing us how the dead can be cared for in community by those who know threshold work. A rent in the fabric of life was torn at their deaths which gave an opening into the spiritual world. The veil was lifted between the physical and the spiritual through the sacred drama that Linda, Marianne, Dennis and those at Hawthorne Valley created.

… People are going back and forth across the door-sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep. — Rumi

by Eric Utne

Linda, Marianne, and Dennis—and Kirsten and Nina—gave us a true gift. Their presentation/ performance was a healing ceremony, community ritual, and high art, all at once. I, like most of the people in the room, was in tears throughout. Afterwards I felt closer to everyone present, on this and the other side of the Threshold. It was a blessed event.

by Jolie Luba

Last year I went to a conference called Sacred Gateway, and was amazed to see around a hundred and fifty people talking about death. Death and dying has been a topic dear to my heart since my early twenties, and I have been holding workshops and round tables, encouraging people to talk about the topic. I have also attended a number of Death Cafés at the Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta. There’s so much connection with my work as an early childhood teacher as well.

At the Sacred Gateway conference, I met people advocating home funerals and green burials, not only honoring Mother Earth and considering ecological aspects, but also creating space for a meaningful grieving process.

I came back to Atlanta, sent a few emails, and a group was formed! We meet monthly, and during one of our initial gatherings, we met with a death midwife who works with a green burial site in Conyers, GA. We have been studying and looking actively at laws and regulations to find out what’s possible in our area in regards to both a green burial and home funeral. There was also a big impulse in the group for singing, and we have been working on songs and other preparations for a memorial service and singing to the dead.

Some people have an interest in discussing ideas about the journey of the soul and spirit after the death of the physical body. Others are interested in preparing for dying, and looking at legalizing a will, or documents that outline advanced directives, such as the Five Wishes.

I just came back from the second Sacred Gateway conference, and again, there were around a hundred and fifty people gathered to discuss death and dying. Very few people attended both. This time, the emphasis was on forming communities and finding the people around you who could step forward in the event of a sudden death. People were happy to hear of our initiative in Georgia.

An interesting discussion centered on pain and suffering at the end of life: palliative care, music to sooth those moments, hospices who have people playing lyre. The other discussion was around control over death in our modern life, the life support equipment and the choices to make, what natural death really means.

The 2020 Sacred Gateway conference is April 16-19, in Detroit: anthroposophy.org/sacredgateway