Griefwalker is a National Film Board of Canada feature documentary film, directed by Tim Wilson. It is a lyrical, poetic portrait of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people. The talk will be in English, with Greek subtitles.

When? Monday, June 12th, 2023 (Door opens at 6:15pm/ 7pm-9pm/ Book signing until 9:30pm)

Where? PLYFA (ΠΛΥΦΑ), Βιομηχανικό Πάρκο ΠΛΥΦΑ, Koritsas 39, Athina 104 47, Athens, Greece

Local contact? Alex Ioannu Phone #: 6937577051 – YES, there is a possibility to pay him directly to book a spot.

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ABOUT GRIEFWALKER ~ Filmed over a twelve year period, Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counselling sessions with dying people and their families, and in meditative and often frank exchanges with the film’s director while paddling a birch bark canoe about the origins and consequences of his ideas for how we live and die. This extraordinary film portrait reveals some of the cultural and spiritual roots that continue to shape his death and dying ideas and teachings.

Dying: the great blindspot in a culture awash in information, the great arbiter in a culture adamant about extending the power of choice across all of our endeavours. Griefwalker is a feature length National Film Board of Canada documentary of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with and on behalf of dying people, directed by Tim Wilson. It is also a profound mandate for creating sanity around the heart breaking and often toxic death fears and practices that gather at our dying time now.

Jenkinson asks,”What does it take to fall in love with being alive?”, and the answer that he offers, both unwelcome and vitally necessary, is, “Being willing to see the end of what you love.”

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Available in DVD format in English with French subtitles, or with  Italian, German, Spanish or Hebrew subtitles – soon in Greek! Note About the Watch Online Version: You can watch the online streaming version on any desktop, tablet or mobile device that supports video while connected to a high-speed internet connection.

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MORE ABOUT STEPHEN JENKINSON ~ Author ~ Master of Ceremony ~ Culture activist ~ Storyteller ~ Off-grid small-scale Farmer ~ Carver ~ Keeper of the Great Hall ~ Jenkinson teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School.

For years, after apprenticing to a master storyteller as a young man, acquiring a master’s degree in theology from Harvard Divinity school and another in social work from the University of Toronto, Stephen Jenkinson led the palliative care department in a major Canadian hospital and was assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. He has worked extensively with caregivers, dying people and their families. Whilst sitting at the deathbeds of over a thousand people, he encountered again and again what he called a “wretched anxiety.” Rather than any one individual’s personal issue with dying, Jenkinson understood this as symptomatic of a cultural absence, a death phobia, a grief illiteracy.

These experiences served to distil a number of questions:  Has it always been this hard to die?  When do we really begin to die, and what are we supposed to do then?  How is it that grief is a skill, something to be learned and practised? Those questions and more spawned several books. He is the subject of the National Film Board of Canada feature length film documentary, Griefwalker (Dir.T.Wilson). (https://orphanwisdom.com/griefwalker/)

He is the author of Reckoning, co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson (2022), and A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015 and translated into Hebrew and Turkish), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Homecoming – The Haiku Sessions (Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002). He was a contributing author to Palliative Care – Core Skills and Clinical Competencies (2007).

Lost Nation Road (Dir.I.MacKenzie) is a glimpse behind-the-scenes of a soulful mystery train. His Nights of Grief and Mystery world tours, with fellow Canadian singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins, are odes to wonder, love letters for the willingness to know endings. 2023 World Tour Dates

Read more about Stephen at orphanwisdom.com/about