IGF023 In Good Faith with author and funeral director Thomas Lynch, recorded live on November 2, 2012. Produced by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: All Souls Day; fear, faith and parenthood; poetry and undertaking; The Sin-Eater and more!
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- "The Lynch “family calling” as funeral directors.
- The image of funeral directors in society: ministry and the marketplace.
- Funeral direction as corporal work of mercy.
- Seeing lightness and darkness as one: “The ridiculous and the sublime belly up to the same bar.”
- Thomas reads from The Undertaking, on fear, faith, and parenthood.
- Funeral customs across cultures.
- Poetry and funerals: metaphor, ritual and symbol.
- The inspiration for The Sin-Eater: A Breviary.
- Thomas reads from The Sin-Eater, the poem “Argyle in Agony.”
Thomas Lynch is an award-winning writer and has been a funeral director for over 40 years. His most recent book, The Sin-Eater: A Breviary, not only follows the thoughts of Argyle on his trade of sin-eating, but also touches into themes of grace, forgiveness, sacrament, faith, and healing. Thomas has also written three collections of essays, including The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, which won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Thomas has been featured on public radio and television networks and has read and lectured at universities and literary centers across the globe. He is a regular presenter to professional conferences of funeral directors, hospice and medical ethics professionals, clergy, educators and business leaders. Thomas’ earliest teachers were Catholic religious sisters and brothers at Brother Rice High School in suburban Detroit. We’ll talk with Thomas Lynch about the many spiritual — and Catholic — themes that flow in and out of his ministry as both a writer and an undertaker.
