Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Photo by D. Christian Lammerts

There's hardly a better place to get in touch with life than in the quiet, stone lined paths of a cemetery. A place where you can observe the arc of life as a measure of time between two dates, where you can visit those who were close to you and are now gone.

Author Mark Taylor says it's also a chance to touch people we never met in life, writers and thinkers who shaped our worldview. He writes that graveyards are so much more than bone-yards, that they beg for pilgrimage, a chance to get close to Wordsworth and Melville, to contemplate Dickinson, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Thoreau.

This Halloween, we are looking death in its face, and seeing a challenge for modern culture to think about these grave matters.