Kerry Egan

Kerry Egan

Sold Out

Festival of Ideas May 2017

Talk

Please note: This event took place in May 2017

Please note: unfortunately this event has been cancelled. Ticket holders may call our Box Office on 0117 927 5100 to receive a refund or exchange their ticket for an alternative event in the programme.

As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan didn’t offer sermons or prayers, unless they were requested; in fact, she found, the dying rarely want to talk about God, at least not overtly. Instead, she discovered she’d been granted an invaluable chance to witness firsthand what she calls the ‘spiritual work of dying’– the work of finding or making meaning of one's life, the experiences it contained and the people who have touched it, the betrayals, wounds, unfinished business and unrealised dreams. Instead of talking, she mainly listened: to stories of hope and regret, shame and pride, mystery and revelation and secrets held too long. Most of all, though, she listened as her patients talked about love – love for their children and partners and friends; love they didn’t know how to offer; love they gave unconditionally; love they, sometimes belatedly, learned to grant themselves.

Speaker biography

Kerry Egan is a hospice chaplain and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of a memoir, Fumbling: A Journey of Love, Adventure and Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, and has published essays in many national print and online publications, including Parents, American Baby, Reader's Digest and CNN. On Living is her latest book.

Followed by a book signing.


× Close

Help us make our website work better for you

We use Google Analytics to gather information on how our website is used. This information helps us to make changes to our website that improve the usefulness and overall experience for our visitors. If you would like to help us to make continuous improvements to our website, please allow us to set "first-party" cookies (only readable by us) so that we can distinguish visitors and gain greater insights.

Allow cookies for analytics Deny cookies for analytics