The Rev. Lizette Larson-Miller, a professor at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., wrote an article in the May 23, 2005, edition of America magazine (subscriber-only) titled “Holy Ground: Roadside Shrines and Sacred Space.” She identified five general characteristics of roadside shrines, and she ponders what liturgical churches might learn from this widespread trend.

Tom Bruce is a psychologist, thanatologist and author who teaches a class in death and dying at Sacramento City College in California.

Cari Leversee is director of Thresholds Home Funerals. Founded in 2003, Thresholds is a non-embalming funeral establishment in San Diego, Calif. It has offered classes on “reclaiming death as a sacred event.”

Ronald Barrett is a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is an expert on African-American contemporary funeral practices.

M. Macha NightMare is co-author of The Pagan Book of Living and Dying (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) and is an expert on neo-pagan death and funerary practices. She lives in San Rafael, Calif. Contact her via her website.

Final Passages is a home-based funeral nonprofit organization in Sebastopol, Calif. They say that personally caring for the body of a loved one – washing it, dressing it and displaying it in the home – can be healing for survivors.

Barbara Taylor is a management consultant with the Institute for Management Excellence in Trabuco Canyon, Calif. She speaks on spirituality in the workplace.

Ian I. Mitroff is president of Mitroff Crisis Management in Manhattan Beach, Calif., and Professor Emeritus at the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. His books include, as co-author, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America: A Hard Look at Spirituality, Religion and Values in the Workplace (Jossey-Bass, 1999). Contact […]

Don McCormick is a professor in the College of Business and Economics at California State University Northridge. He has taught and written about Buddhist and other spiritual practices and religion in the workplace.