Death

Mackenzie: Hi, welcome back to Quaker Faith and Podcast. We are your hosts, Mackenzie and Micah. Today we’ve decided that we are going to talk about death. So just imagine me back in my high school goth phase.

Micah: And just imagine me being completely as I always am.

Micah: Before we got started recording, we were just talking about how we feel like Quakers have … particularly some kinds of Quakers … have particular ways of dealing with death, both in terms of how we think about what happens when you die, what’s the meaning of death, but also in terms of what’s the meaning of the body, what’s the body valued at, is it important to have the body for a funeral, or is it normal to cremate the body and have a memorial service later and all sorts of things.

Micah: I feel like I’ve definitely noticed sort of Quaker traditions and folk ways around dealing with those sorts of things that may be different from other groups in the US.

Mackenzie: I grew up Catholic, which has like a thing about having to have … Well, they now allow cremation, but it’s very much normal for Catholics that you’re going to have a body and you’re going to have a funeral within about a week of death, usually more like three or four days. The reason that they usually have the body and not cremation is because of believing in the physical resurrection of the dead at the end times. Although they do allow cremation now. So for me moving into Quakers, it’s been like, “Wait, you wait a month before you do something after someone dies?”

Micah: Yeah. I always thought that whole being skittish about cremation because the resurrection was a little bit weird, because tons of people die in shipwrecks and airline accidents and all sorts of other ways where the body is like dissolved. Furthermore, when you bury someone, I mean give it a hundred years, that body is just dust.

Mackenzie: [inaudible 00:02:21]

Micah: I don’t see how it’s really different.

Mackenzie: Skeletons marching down the street.

Micah: I don’t know anything about this. Do you know how long a skeleton lasts?

Mackenzie: They find ones from thousands of years ago, and certainly there are Catholic saint relics that are as old as Catholicism.

Micah: Well that’s fair. But they embalm those suckers. We got like St Peter’s big toe embalmed in some kind of fluid or something, right?

Mackenzie: In theory, the things that are relics are things that were miraculously preserved without embalming.

Micah: Oh, right. Yeah. Because you got … the miracle proves it’s the real deal.

Mackenzie: Right.

Micah: Yeah. It would have been-

Mackenzie: Bones are just calcium carbonate. So like …

Micah: Right. It would’ve been good if I had done any research before this episode, because I don’t know the answer to basic questions. Like when you cremate someone, what happens to the bones?

Mackenzie: They also get burned.

Micah: They actually burn the bones or do they have to like crush them?

Mackenzie: Kind of both.

Micah: Yeah. That’s-

Mackenzie: There are little bone bits in there. It’s gritty.

Micah: That’s kind of disturbing.

Micah: Another piece of research that probably would have been really helpful for me to do before this episode is I actually don’t know what most Americans … and again, like for all our international listeners, sorry, we’re talking about America because that’s what we know. There may be totally different folk ways in Britain or East Africa or anywhere else were Quakers are, but I think we probably mostly know just about the US.

Mackenzie: About half of dead people get cremated in the US, Google says.

Micah: About half. Okay, yeah. Because that is something I did not know.

Micah: So my impression … now to give my background culturally here, I was raised among what I would call old school evangelical friends, which means they’re evangelical friends, but they still hold to a lot of Quaker tradition. I was raised among old school Quakers, old school evangelical Quakers, and then later have had a lot of exposure to liberal Quakers and conservative Quakers.

Micah: Among those folks, I’ve noticed that pretty much the standard operating procedure is when someone dies, however it works for cremation, they’re pretty immediately cremated. And then-

Mackenzie: [crosstalk 00:04:53] buried or just cremated?

Micah: They can be buried, but I bet you they’re probably also cremated before they’re buried.

Mackenzie: Oh, okay.

Micah: But I mean they’re cremated and something happened with the ashes. I don’t really know. Because the way the remembrance of them tends to happen is it’s like, oh yeah, they’re cremated at however long after death, probably within days, if not immediately. But then like a month or multiple months later, it can be several months later, then there is one or more memorial services where we remember the person.

Mackenzie: [crosstalk 00:05:34] service or a memorial meeting?

Micah: What’s the difference?

Mackenzie: No, I’m just curious which terminology is used among old school evangelical friends?

Micah: I’d probably say a memorial service.

Mackenzie: Okay. Because I always hear memorial meeting among liberal friends.

Micah: Oh, okay. Among old school evangelical friends, I suspect there’s not much difference in substance. My experience of it … and this is in Great Plains yearly meeting, which admittedly the old school evangelical friends that are there, again, these are more traditionalist evangelical friends. So you would find probably pretty different behavior among more mainstream evangelical friends.

Mackenzie: Like the Eastern Region?

Micah: Sure, for example.

Mackenzie: [crosstalk 00:06:20]

Micah: Yeah. So my experience of these memorial services or these memorial meetings, whichever you want to call them, is basically it’s a meeting for worship where the focus of the worship is remembering those who have died. And realistically the discipline is a little bit different from a regular meeting for worship, and it’s more … I mean hopefully people are speaking from a spirit-filled place, but in reality it’s … more so than a normal meeting for worship, it’s time for people to express their appreciation and their remembrance and their feelings about the deceased.

Mackenzie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kind of like how in weddings there’s an angle to how the ministry is happening.

Micah: For sure. Although I will say at Faith and my wedding, we really hoped that the ministry would actually be real ministry and not just “Oh, we love this couple type,” of ministry. And thanks be to God, that’s what happened. And I think that can really happen to memorial services to, where there is obviously a focus for the memorial service because the person or persons have died, but also there can be real spirit-led vocal ministry that happens in that time too, and it can be really powerful.

Mackenzie: Okay.

Micah: One thing … So you mentioned evangelical friends, in for example, places like Ohio and in Eastern Region, and certainly in other places too, but more mainstream evangelical Quakers, mainstream in the sense of their mainstream evangelicals. I think there’s probably more of a tendency to do a regular funeral service with a body present. I know that my wife, Faith, has told me that … She grew up in Eastern Region in Ohio, and in her experience most people, there were like …. For me, growing up, there were memorial services, for Faith growing up, there were funerals, and a funeral indicates the presence of the body.

Mackenzie: Okay. That was funny because I remember … so my husband grew up among liberal friends, and I remember asking him about how does the memorial service work here. And he said, “Well, you know, it’s probably about the same amount of time after the person dies as a Catholic funeral would be, like a month or something.”

Mackenzie: I’m like, “Honey, that is not how long it is after the death among Catholics.”

Micah: Right.

Mackenzie: You kick the bucket, you have a wake that’s like three days, that’s viewing the body. Historically, the wake is to see in case they wake up, because that used to be a concern before we had much more definite ways of determining death scientifically. Although people [crosstalk 00:09:11].

Micah: I never even thought about that. That’s amazing.

Mackenzie: Uh-huh. That’s what it is. It used to happen in people’s living rooms. People’s living rooms used to be referred to as parlors, and now you go to a funeral parlor, and we changed the name to living room because it’s no longer the room where you display the dead body, basically.

Micah: Right.

Mackenzie: Yeah. So we have the few days in case they wake up, and then have the funeral. So I was like, “Oh honey, that’s not how the Catholics do it.”

Micah: Right.

Mackenzie: So by the way, one of our friends up in Sierra Cascades? Up in Oregon. I’d asked about funerals a little while ago, and I found our conversation about it, and he said that they definitely call it memorial service there.

Micah: Okay.

Mackenzie: He said that most of the time it’s within a week or two of death, and there is rarely a casket. Graveside service, if there is one, is usually reserved for family.

Micah: That sounds like more like what I grew up-

Mackenzie: I don’t know why this cut out, but he said that sounds like what he grew up with.

Micah: Right. Since they’re a part of Sierra Cascades, I’m sort of assuming that they’re more old school evangelicals who are more connected with the old Quaker folk ways.

Mackenzie: Yeah. That sounds right.

Micah: Something I wanted to explore in this episode about friends and death, and specifically the death of an individual and how that’s handled. I wanted to think a little bit about how the way friends apparently … I don’t know when this stuff started, because presumably we used to bury bodies, and at some point we decided to start cremating and having memorial services later.

Micah: But I wonder what that says about our theology and our understanding of what death means and what the body, like the physical body means and things like that. Because plenty of people in my circles have died. I’ve known a number of people who have died. I’ve never seen a dead body.

Mackenzie: Never?

Micah: No.

Mackenzie: Oh wow.

Micah: Right. So people have died in my life-

Mackenzie: [crosstalk 00:11:35]. Okay, the first I ever saw a dead body, because I used to do altar-serving in the Catholic Church, which that’s like the one ministry in the Catholic Church that’s open to children. I think I was maybe 10 or 11 the first time I served at a funeral, and I think I was like 13 or 14 before my parents actually let me go to a funeral home when someone in our family died. And I don’t think they even realized that I’d been going to funerals for years at that point.

Micah: Well now that I said it, I’m thinking it’s possible. I don’t have a clear memory, but I think it’s possible I may have seen my aunt Linda’s body after she died. And the reason that would have been … I’m not sure I actually saw it, they may have prevented me from seeing it, but if I did see it, it was because she lived downstairs from us. And when she died we were all like … someone in my family found the body. I may have seen it that way.

Micah: But my experience of death in my circles is someone dies and it’s like they vaporized, like they went on a long trip and they’re never coming back. Because there’s no body, and there’s no sense of resolution. I don’t know, maybe there’s some resolution when you see someone’s dead body, but I wouldn’t know because I haven’t.

Mackenzie: My husband says he’s never seen a dead body either.

Micah: Interesting. Yeah, I mean maybe this is more normal. So he’s from a liberal friends background and he’s had similar experience to me, where it’s always like, yeah that person died, now they’re vaporized and we’ll have a memorial service where we never see them again.

Mackenzie: Huh.

Micah: What does that say? I don’t necessarily have a strong opinion about how things ought to be, but what does that say about our theology? What does that say about how we understand death and the body and what the body’s place is? Is it significant that in many Quaker circles someone dies, and unless you found the body and or were involved in getting it to the crematorium, you never see the body, you never see that person again. It’s just like they’re gone.

Mackenzie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that’s a fair question. I wonder if I’ve never seeing one in funerals and things growing up, if that means that the day you do eventually find one, because most people end up getting married or taking care of aging parents, so at some point you’re going to either find your spouse or your parent, or maybe you’ll sit with them in the hospital room while they die. But at some point there will be somebody dead in your life. Does that make it more traumatic that one time it eventually happens because you’ve never seen one before?

Micah: I did some work for a few years of … there’s a newsletter that goes out to hospice associations, like state associations in the United States, and for several years I helped write it, which meant that I went through all the news that was coming out about death and dying, about hospice and palliative care, and I put it into a digest. So I sort of reinterpreted it.

Micah: So I got to read a lot of stuff every week about death and dying in the United States. Something that in some of these accounts, or in some of the stories that were coming out about death and dying, it seems like a lot of people who do see people die, who are present at the time of death, or are present with dead bodies afterwards and things like that, it seems like it can be a very profound experience, and one that really promotes a sense of spirituality in the sense that … I’ve just read and I’ve heard, people have told me too, but I’ve heard and read that a lot of people find that the experience of seeing someone die to be like … that they’ve experienced it, like I said, as a visceral awareness of the reality of life beyond the body.

Micah: And I can imagine it too, right? Because there’s the presence that a person has, and they’re present with you, and then they’re suddenly … death occurs, and then they are not there. People say often, “Their body’s there, but that’s not them anymore.”

Mackenzie: Right. Yeah. Sometimes people will talk about it as being like the soul leaving the body. And you’ll see that imagery a lot in movies, cartoons, whatever. But I wonder about … we’ve talked before about Quakers having a certain gnosticism, like a gnostic lean, and I wonder about … that kind of sounds like that too.

Micah: I think our gnostic lean dovetails with our puritan roots of not wanting to be frivolous. So it’s like, “Well, why would we be frivolous and have a big ceremony for someone’s body? Let’s just burn it and get on with it.”

Mackenzie: Right. And also cremation is extremely cheap in the U.S. versus burial. And the absolute cheapest thing you can do with the body in the U.S is donate it to science, which my husband has told me that’s what he wants me to do. He’s like, “Do whatever is cheapest. That probably means donate to science. If I end up on a body farm or I end up dissected, whatever.”

Micah: Do you know what you would prefer done with your body?

Mackenzie: I would prefer not to think about it.

Micah: I’ve thought about it a fair amount. Primarily just because my mom works in the hospice industry, and I’ve done all this research about hospice and palliative care and death and dying. So just sort of as an occupational hazard, I’ve had the opportunity to think about it a lot. I don’t have a strong desire, like it doesn’t matter that much to me, but I think if I had a choice of exactly how I would like it to go down, I think I’d prefer to be buried without anything, without even really a casket, basically put me in a bed sheet and bury me like the woods. I sort of like the idea of naturally decomposing and becoming one with the earth again and rejoin that cycle.

Micah: It sort of freaks me out, the thought of how so much burial happens in the U.S. these days of intense embalming where you’re so filled with chemicals, how could you ever be anything but a poison.

Mackenzie: Right. They fill you with chemicals and put you in a really, really fancy, fancy, fancy box. Then they put that inside a concrete vault to ensure that the worms don’t get to you or whatever.

Mackenzie: I’ve actually heard that Quaker burial grounds are popular among hippies, even hippies who aren’t Quakers, because of Quaker burial grounds, having practiced green burial for so long, green burial meaning you’re just in a pine box. So now apparently Quaker burial ground … people who aren’t hippies are requesting to be green buried in Quaker burial grounds because they’re one of the few places where people aren’t going to go, “You want to actually rot?”

Micah: You mentioned the concrete vaults, and I’m sure it somewhat has to do with wanting to prevent decomposition, but the big thing is the places where vaults are required are required is places like Louisiana where the water table is so high, they don’t want bodies rising out of the ground because of the water. So they have the vaults to hold them in place.

Mackenzie: Right. Yes. There is the concrete on top thing with the … yeah. Although I know Marlborough Meeting up in Pennsylvania, in the front left-hand corner of their burial ground, they have one of those ones where there’s a whole concrete slab all across the top.

Micah: Interesting. So do you just call it like Zombie prevention measures?

Mackenzie: I don’t know.

Micah: The Anti-Zombie feet shield.

Mackenzie: I could certainly see a problem with when you have just a regular green burial, that eventually you’re going to have to go and add more dirt, because you’re going to get an indentation as the body decomposes and the dirt compacts.

Micah: Well that’s why I say in my … again, it’s not so important to me that I would want people to expend a huge amount of effort on this. But I prefer the idea of just being buried not in a cemetery, but just literally out in the woods where it doesn’t matter if there’s an indentation in the ground.

Mackenzie: Yeah. But then you’re going to have somebody who is going to … there’s going to be like development or somebody is going to be like … somebody’s dog is going to be digging and they’re gonna find you. And then they’re going to be like, “Oh no. A grave with a body in the middle of the woods.” Is this a crime scene?” And you’re just going to cause [crosstalk 00:21:09].

Micah: That’s why it’s traditional to bury the body fairly deep, because you don’t want a dog digging it up.

Mackenzie: Some murderer is going to go try to bury somebody and they’re going to accidentally find you while the trying to bury …

Micah: Wow. Wow. Your mind just went there.

Mackenzie: I [inaudible 00:21:31] the entirety of the show bones. Sorry.

Micah: Yeah. Well I can tell you how I don’t want to be buried. I don’t want to be buried a la Breaking Bad. How about that?

Mackenzie: I haven’t seen that one, but okay.

Micah: Oh, okay. Well spoiler alert, some people get dissolved in acid.

Mackenzie: Gotcha.

Micah: So are Quakers … and again, we’re speaking primarily about Quakers who are more steeped in the traditional Quaker culture I guess, and folk ways around burial, but are Quakers getting it wrong? Are those types of Quakers getting it wrong? Are we doing death wrong?

Mackenzie: Probably not. Is there such a thing as wrong, necessarily?

Micah: Well, like I say, I have had questions myself about whether it’s a bad thing that I have lost loved ones and I’ve never seen a body. You know what I mean? Is there something fundamentally wrong with being so disconnected from the physical reality of death?

Mackenzie: And is the body in some way necessary for the grieving process?

Micah: And not yes. And I think maybe even more profoundly than-

Mackenzie: I think that might be more of a, for some people, yes.

Micah: But that is part of what I’m talking about, but also in addition to the grieving process, which of course is important, I’m almost just thinking about for my and our, as Quakers, understanding of the reality of death and what death really means, do I really … So I’ve always had a difficult time connecting with the idea of an afterlife for example, or the idea that my consciousness is somehow separate from my body or distinct in some way for my body. But would I feel differently if I had seen my loved ones actually die and and saw that transition?

Micah: Because a lot of people who do see this transition, that’s one of the things I say. It’s people who, like me, were fairly skeptical of afterlife and things like that who suddenly were like, “Yeah, no, it’s real.”

Mackenzie: You never know. Then you hear people who’ve had near death experiences talk about somebody greeting them, or I’ve heard of people when they’re watching someone die, that the dying person will suddenly get a huge smile on their face right before they go.

Micah: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I’ve heard of about these things. It just makes me wonder, has the Quaker culture. I’ve been a part of, has it had a negative impact on me? Has it blinded me to some aspect of reality, and put me in a zone where we’re not allowed to see death? I guess you can’t answer that one, but it’s-

Mackenzie: [crosstalk 00:24:39].

Micah: It’s an open question I have. And I think something that … for those of us who are listening to this podcast that have either come up in, or now are in, as an adult, a Quaker culture that does lean that way and is somewhat death-denying, what’s that doing to us?

Mackenzie: Actually related to this, and to the idea that the body is not them and that sort of gnostic lean, I have noticed that support for physician-assisted suicide, for euthanasia, if you are terminally ill, being able to choose to go, I’ve noticed it seems a lot higher among liberal Quakers than other folks I know. I know for certain that the Catholic church is strongly opposed to it.

Micah: Yeah.

Mackenzie: But I’ve had people tell me, “Oh man, if I ever get Alzheimer’s … once it gets to a point that I won’t even be in there anymore,” and that sort of thing.

Micah: My suspicion is that Quakers’ views on things like that, on euthanasia for example, I think the Quakers’ views on that probably map pretty close to 100% to their other demographic information, as opposed to there being some distinctly Quaker thing. So I suspect that upper-middle class white people in cities who are Quakers probably think the same thing about euthanasia is most upper-middle class white people in cities.

Mackenzie: That’s fair. I know that the big thing that stuck out to me was, in yearly meeting, there was talk about whether we should or shouldn’t [inaudible 00:26:50] support for legalizing euthanasia. [crosstalk 00:26:52].

Micah: Sorry, quick question.

Mackenzie: What’s up?

Micah: Quick question, McKenzie. When you say euthanasia, are we speaking about physician-assisted suicide where the individual receives medication from the doctor to be able to kill themselves, or are we talking about euthanasia where doctors actually kill the patient at their request?

Mackenzie: The prescription.

Micah: Okay. So physician-assisted suicide.

Mackenzie: Yeah.

Micah: Okay, cool.

Mackenzie: I was trying to not use the S word too much as it bothers people who have had mental difficulties around that.

Micah: Like I say, I did this research for several years, so I got fairly familiar with the terminology. Another term for that is physician-assisted dying, for those who are for it, they call it physician-assisted dying. But there is a distinction, because I think the only country on Earth where euthanasia is legal right now is the Netherlands, where the doctor will actually kill you. But in other places where physician-assisted dying is legal, obviously the physician will not kill you, but they will give you medication so you can kill yourself.

Mackenzie: Gotcha. Death with dignity is another term.

Mackenzie: So anyway, I was gonna say that the other side of this that I see a lot online, because of the circles I run in online, is from disability advocates who are very concerned about the possibility of loved ones, those with medical power of attorney, etc., deciding when it’s time to use the prescription as opposed to the actual recipient of the medication.

Micah: Yeah. That’s an issue with physician-assisted dying is that you can only it while you’re able to do it. In other words, if you become incapacitated, no one can put you down so to speak, because you have to personally make the choice to end your life. Whereas with euthanasia, theoretically you could already be incapacitated but have already expressed her wishes, and the physician could kill you.

Mackenzie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I guess I’m thinking more of if you’ve already filled the prescription and have it sitting around, but haven’t decided whether to actually use it. Because a massive part of the time people fill the prescription and then they never actually use it. It’s just comforting to have around just in case.

Micah: Absolutely. Yeah. I think in Oregon, where it’s been legal for a long time, the vast majority of people who get a prescription never use it.

Mackenzie: Right. But that does mean having it around the house. So if the caretaker or whoever decides to slip that in when you’re not noticing or something …

Micah: Yikes.

Mackenzie: … you wouldn’t know. That would be a very bad thing. So I know that that’s a thing that worries some people.

Mackenzie: I also know that I’ve noticed that one of the worries among disability advocates is about the way that people talk about it and the ableism involved. Because a lot of it is, “Oh, if I had to live in the such and so way, gosh, I don’t know how I could live. I’d rather be dead than live like such.”

Micah: Right.

Mackenzie: And then they’d describe the way somebody who has been living like this for decades lives, and they’re like, “Uh hi, are you saying that I just shouldn’t be here?”

Micah: Right. This is super interesting, and I think it goes back to … Didn’t we have an episode on abortion?

Mackenzie: I don’t want to do one. Do you?

Micah: We really should do an episode on abortion, but I think this dovetails with that. Because you get the same thing with people arguing for abortion, and people practicing abortion to eliminate people with Down’s Syndrome for example, and that tension between exactly what you were saying, where people are imagining themselves as having a certain handicap, and then people with that condition being like, “Well, I don’t want to die. What, am I not worth living?”

Mackenzie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Exactly that sort of thing. And like I said, I don’t know if it’s just … I don’t know what the, what the general population feeling on this is. I just know that that is a stark contrast that I’ve noticed in two circles that I’m involved with, is Quakers being like, “Of course there should be death with dignity laws,” and disabled folks being like, “[Eeee 00:31:48].”

Micah: Right. Yeah. I tend to be sympathetic with that. It’s a fairly short walk from physician-assisted dying to involuntary assisted dying and eugenics. Cool.

Micah: Well I feel like we have sort of been like … our airplane was headed from Quaker A to Quaker B, and we’ve started off to general world C. But maybe that’s good because it’s all connected.

Mackenzie: I guess one last thing we can mention is … because you said about being buried in the woods or talk about green burial, mentioned this before we started recording, but just for fun historical facts for listeners. The really, really, really, really old Quaker burial grounds, they don’t have any headstones. Somewhere there’s a map that shows where to find the bodies and who’s in which spot and which spots are still empty so that when you go to bury a new one, you don’t hit an existing one.

Mackenzie: Then the somewhat newer ones, they’ll just have a stone at the head and a stone at the foot, and they might just be able to like [inaudible 00:33:05]. There’s a footstone and a headstone and now you know where not to dig to put a new one in. And then when you get a little newer, they start putting dates on those, but still no names. And then eventually they got to putting on names and dates.

Mackenzie: So you can actually … I know there’s Alexandria friends meeting at Woodlawn in Virginia, they’re either the oldest or the second-oldest meeting in the DC region, and they have a burial ground where as you walk through you can see the eras of burial.

Micah: Yeah, I know when I’ve been to cemeteries out in Oregon for example, were Quakers are buried, it seems like … a lot of the older ones especially, but the standard seems to be a headstone maybe about the size of a brick with the name and dates. But yeah, the newer ones, they tend to be more and more like bigger, normal-looking headstones that you would expect in any other cemetery.

Mackenzie: I don’t know if necessarily that you would expect in any other cemetery. Because I don’t think you’re still going to see … like a lot of cemeteries, you’ll see the statuary-type ones.

Micah: Yeah.

Mackenzie: And I [crosstalk 00:34:29].

Micah: No, no, no. You’re not going to see that. You’re not going to see some sort of … yeah, you see some really, from my perspective, from the Quaker, you see some really crazy stuff, of big memorials, like huge obelisks, and all sorts of stuff. You don’t see that.

Mackenzie: Or angels or whatever.

Micah: Yeah.

Mackenzie: So our gravestones are still pretty plain, but they do exist now. [inaudible 00:34:57] seeing a photo where there was a sign that had … there was an empty field to the left and headstones to the right, and a sign that was like Quaker burial ground [inaudible 00:35:07] Orthodox. Because one side adopted gravestones before the other and I don’t remember which one.

Micah: Yeah. Well, I think that again, one of the things that’s come up in this episode that I think is worth bearing in mind is that there’s a significant body of evangelical friends who actually have held to a lot of really traditional Quaker folk ways. I mean in the same way, there’s a lot of liberal friends that have hung to a lot of traditional Quaker folk ways, even as their culture has changed too.

Micah: So yeah, there’s extremes both sides. There’s extremes with liberal Quakers about changing things up, and then extremes on the evangelical side changing things up. But there’s a significant body in the middle, both evangelical and liberal and conservative, that a lot of their stuff is pretty similar.

Mackenzie: Yeah. Okay.

Mackenzie: Well I think we have covered death and aspects thereof pretty well. We did not end up talking about ghosts, which we had sort of joked about beforehand.

Micah: That’s just gonna have to be its own episode. You know that.

Mackenzie: Okay.

Micah: We can start that one with the Ghostbusters theme.

Mackenzie: That sounds like copyright problems.

Micah: Nah. It’s fair use.

Mackenzie: I’m not sure about this. Because if it’s not parody …

Mackenzie: Anyway, we will see or hear … or you will hear from us again in two weeks. Signing out.