celebrants

Much to celebrate?

26 May 2010
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: celebrants

When wireless listeners switched on for the BBC Home Service (now R4) news on Good Friday, 1930, the announcer began in familiar terms in his familiar dark brown voice: “This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news. There is no news today.” The resulting startled gap was filled with 15 mins of pianoforte music.

I apologise for getting nothing posted yesterday, not even 15 mins of improving pianoforte music. I thought I had a nice, juicy little story in the bag but, on following it up, discovered that it was a silly and not unsqualid story best left unprobed, unseen. It all took time.

In the absence of any exciting breaking news this morning, I found myself, while walking the dogs, brooding on a telephone conversation I had yesterday.

Secular celebrants reckon themselves to be a force for change and may even congratulate themselves on what they have accomplished. Many of the qualities they bring are, I would mischievously and provocatively point out, best expressed in the negative: they don’t mumble so much, they don’t get the dead person’s name wrong, they’re not so disengaged, they’re not so ‘samey’ and they don’t talk so much nonsense. In brief, they’re not as awful as some, a dwindling number, of ordained ministers, none of whom talk nonsense anyway, they talk theology.

Celebrants pride themselves on the time they spend, the care they take, the degree of personalisation they achieve. Unique funerals for unique people, they say. It’s a fine vision. I think many underestimate the amount of time and care many ministers also expend.

And let’s acknowledge, too, that many secular celebrants are spreading themselves very thin and doing too many funerals. Is every one of their ceremonies a stand-alone one-off? No way. They are, actually, very samey. I have every sympathy with them; ringing the changes is exceedingly hard to do. The one-size-fits-all religious rite, we discover, is not a lazy expedient but, done well, a superb piece of ceremonial couture which flatters the figure of each dead person who wears it.

Why are some secular celebrants spreading themselves too thin? Because they need to make a living from a vocation which pays very badly. This leaves them time-poor. So they cut corners. They get the facts but they don’t get the feel. And it serves. Because it is not, actually, all that difficult to meet the expectations of funeral consumers, for their expectations remain extremely low.

Celebrancy is, arguably, a job for portfolio workers and the retired. Otherwise, it’s a weirdly onesided way of making a living. A lot of potentially excellent celebrants look at the rates of pay and decide they simply can’t afford to work for that. Neither are they attracted by the pride-swallowing involved in sucking up to undertakers and supplicating for referrals.

So: what is the maximum number of funerals per week that a secular celebrant can perform well? Three? Four? I’d be interested to know what you think.

Some secular celebrants are superb. They have played an heroic part in making farewell ceremonies for the dead more focussed on the individual, more palatable, more meaningful, more relevant, more emotionally congruent. Some of these ceremonies are really nice and some are really good.

And yet, most secular ceremonies still happen at the crem. Most resemble religious ceremonies, use the same basic template. In the words of Thomas Long, they ‘evoke a vague impression of the sacred’.

So, what can we say about the ceremonial status and ritual authority of the secular celebrant? You need a minister at a funeral to broker the deal with God but you don’t need a celebrant for anything except to say the stuff that others don’t feel up to.

Where are things moving towards? What is their destination? Is the role of the secular celebrant set to accrue ceremonial significance or is it due to dwindle?

Any thoughts?

Greening grief

18 May 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: celebrants, green funeral, Grief, natural burial

The GFG motored purposefully south yesterday afternoon to Chiltern Woodland Burial Park. It was a three-birds-with-one-stone mission: to have a look at this well-heeled natural burial ground; to hear the great Dr Bill Webster talk about grief; and to meet up with Louise from Sentiment and Jon from MuchLoved, two of Funeralworld’s Good Guys.

I think I’ve reached a stage now where I don’t know what I think about natural burial. On the one hand, there is the seductive loveliness of the best burial grounds; on the other, the seeming forgottenness of those whose gravesites have resolved themselves into indistinguishability. We are all forgotten eventually, of course, and our graves unvisited for some time before that. What would make the best sense of the environmental mission of Chiltern would be a re-use of graves policy—impossible under present legislation. In the meantime, I wonder if they’re burying enough people to recoup investment. The buildings are either very beautiful if you like that sort of thing, or unobjectionable if you don’t. There’s a gathering hall and a ceremony hall with lots of glass and a lectern a little like an elaborate bird table. The design of the site conforms to an elaborate conception of the architect that your experience should mirror “the inner journey that we humans where to order cialis online make as we honour and release the body of a loved one to the grave”.  This is not necessarily apparent, of course, but, in addition to money, a lot of thought has gone into this place.

Outside the hall I was greeted hospitably by Dr Bill, whom I had not met before, and invited to join his group of tea drinkers. Dr Bill is sharp, funny and humane. He talks a lot of sense, and in a way which people can relate to. I was a fan in around 1 second, possibly less.

A great deal of what he said about grief counselling related to funerals. Here’re just some of the things he said that I jotted down: “You have to make the words with which to put someone to rest—that which cannot be put into words cannot be put to rest … Put the dying and the death into the context of the whole life lived … Empowerment is the antidote for loss of control. Never do anything for those who grieve which they can do for themselves.”

There’s a big lesson here for funeral directors and celebrants, I think: “Never do anything for those who grieve which they can do for themselves.”

Do have a look at Dr Bill’s website. It’s full of excellent resources. Click here.

Celebrancy opportunity

26 March 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: celebrants

Here is a possibly inspiring tale from a celebrant in the south-east. She has asked me to withhold her name and email address because she simply won’t have time to correspond if lots of people want to contact her.

Hi Charles

You have quite often written about celebrants and recently people who do not want a funeral and I thought you might like to know my news. I have been trying to widen my celebrancy base for some time, offering ceremonies for all the life events I can think of even a Coming out of Prison ceremony! Uptake has been abit slow though and as I was wondering how I could make a living as a fulltime celebrant it suddenly came to me when I was doing a funeral ceremony in the crem a about 8 months ago, a sudden out of the box leap of the imagination. This is how it happened, I was in the middle of a poem I have read so many times I can do it from memory, I was looking at the mourners doing my best to make eye contact and put across the meaning of the poem and as so often happens I was getting nothing back except for rather empty stares from rather hollow eyes, you know what I mean I’m sure!! At first I felt a bit miffed to put it frankly. I thought, “come on people I’m doing all the work here!!!” and then it struck me, THESE PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!! I went on thinking and pondering about this in the days afterwards. I pondered that as a celebrant what we try to do is to take all of the burden off of our families that we possibly can, what with all their grief that they have to struggle to contend with, this is where we as celebrants and funeral directors come in, make it as easy for them as we possibly can, lift the burden. “All you have to do is be there!” is something I often say to familys beforehand about the funeral because their so not looking forward to it. Infact so many don’t want to be there actually even though they want their loved one to have a good send off so, and this is my BIG NEWS, now I explore this with familys gently and tell them “you don’t have to be there if you don’t want you know, I’ll do it all” and if they want arrange for photo’s to be taken, audio recording, even a video, I can fix that for them. Of course most people feel after quite a big struggle they ought to go along and they do come but some decide not, its a weight off their mind and they are very grateful knowing that everything is going to be done with dignity and they will have a momento of the event of their choice. This does not I emphasise go down at all well with some of my Funeral Directors!! But I remind them that choice is everything these days isn’t it?!!

Again thinking outside the envelope (my big strength!) from this I thought about all those people that don’t just find funerals difficult they find looking after their elderly rellies difficult especially if their in a care home and perhaps a bit lacking in faculties. They dread that weekly visit!! So now I offer a service to these families, it goes like this. We have a weekly phone chat and they tell me all the news, they also give me a shopping list of everything I need to take up. I go up to the care home and I sit with the old person and tell them all the news slowly in their own time often using photo’s to link the news item to the person it applies to. The old folk really appreciate I think having someone talk to them who has time and is a bridge to their family, someone who doesn’t feel awkward and itchy to go, my professional detachment kicks in, we develop a real bond. Well two weeks ago one of my oldies died, a lady and here’s my big news, on Tuesday we had her funeral and the family entrusted everything to me, it was a huge privilege and gesture of trust, I was up there at the crem on my own representing them, just me and old Mum and it made such a difference actually knowing the deceased for once, it felt really lovely and I spoke some of the words to her and some to a video camera which the family now has as a momento. The family were so grateful and we all though we had done Mum proud.

So there we are, here’s a thought for all you celebrants out there, if you want to offer a joined up service to people consider offering this service, I can’t tell you want a difference it makes doing a funeral for someone you actually know!!

NOTE: This is satirical fiction. It was composed by the author in an uncharacteristically sardonic mood. He deeply regrets, if you have given the above any credence whatever, that we should have come to this.

Words, words, words

9 February 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony

Following my post about the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words, I stumbled on this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s actually about citizenship ceremonies, but you’d never guess it from the way I’ve plucked the extracts:

Traditionally, ritual, including rites of passage, is embedded in our religious culture. And it is true that religion seems to have a competitive advantage when it comes to this stuff. Religions have been practising their liturgy for a long time. The godly are very good at all of the non-verbal aspects of ritual from bells and smells to crazy cozies to speaking in tongues. Great ceremony is about an absence of speeches and many faiths get this.

Moreover, the godly have the advantage that they feel that they are consecrating their rites in the presence of their transcendent God. That ineluctably gives an ineffable power to the ceremony. The godless will obviously struggle to match that attribute of faith. And we need to get better at the non-verbal stuff. We atheists can talk the leg off a chair but we can’t sing or chant or dance the leg off an amputee.

Now a real rite of passage doesn’t just rejoice in change. It is the change. A ceremony which merely celebrates but doesn’t cause the change is not strictly a rite of passage. Graduation ceremonies from university are rites of passage because you don’t get the damned piece of paper without enduring the ceremony. On this definition, school graduations strictly aren’t rites of passage because the exam marks after the ceremony are the life-changing event, not the school graduation or valedictory service. So funerals aren’t strictly rites of passage because unless you’re a time traveller, your funeral won’t end your life, just celebrate it.

We, of the secular world, often fail to employ those non-verbal rituals that make a ceremony. You can easily cock up even the most moving event by speeches. During my days of municipal service, these ceremonies meandered between inspirational and pedestrian. The pedestrian bits were inevitably the speeches. The best bits were non-verbal – the Mayoral handshake, the familial hugging, the singing of the national anthem, the presentation of the symbolic wattle and the giving of certificate. All of these had no words merely music or actions.

Religions don’t have a monopoly on rites of passage but they do them better than us. The secular world needs to learn more about celebrating without speeches. We need to have rituals we perform together and not passively watch. I think we are still a century or so away from really learning these skills.

At the heart of great ceremony is performance that is not normal. Normal is pedestrian. Words are dull. We need transforming ceremony and that requires anything but speeches.

Read the whole article here.

More than just a matter of tone

4 February 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony

This is an interesting blog post. Here’s a taster:

What I hate most at funerals is the tone used by the officiant (almost wrote: the presiding officer). No matter what the religious faith may be, the person in front of the congregation speaks as if he knew … I think it’s the tone of voice that does me in. As if the officiant had a direct line into whatever deity resides in that particular structure. I’d rather hang around with the person’s old buddies, whoever they may be … We’d drink to his peace of mind and ours, then we’d start working his absence into the fabric of things.

Read all of it here.

What needs to be done

19 December 2009
Charles
No comments
Categories: celebrants
Here’s a guest post by Jonathan Taylor. He’s posted before, here and here. He’s a loyal and regular commenter and contributor to debate. Indeed, he puts the fizz into much that we discuss.

In his post; Doing what needs to be done, saying what needs to be said Charles raises the point that the recently bereaved aren’t given the opportunity to grieve practically and effectively through active funeral ritual and rite during liminal mourning, and celebrants need to encourage them into more hands-on involvement. Of course this means, among other things, gently opening up the idea of a useful, rather than a merely dutiful, funeral, which may be a foreign concept to many. It all takes time. And, as X-Piry rightly points out in her comment, time is the one thing we’re mostly short of. But why?

Let’s not demonize the poor funeral director. He’s only doing his job (with a handful of notable exceptions, they know who they are). But that’s just the trouble, isn’t it? What, or rather who, is the common denominator in all such unnecessarily hurried funerals?

Remember my post about my son’s girlfriend’s sister who was killed by a bus? We had her funeral on Tuesday, over three weeks after she died. To cut a long story short it worked perfectly, for all the literally hundreds of people there, including me, and total strangers hugged me afterwards in floods of tears to tell me so. One comment summed up them all: “It hurt like hell, but it did my heart good.”

All I did was arrange as well as conduct it – I acted as funeral director as well as celebrant – according to the family’s evolving needs over the weeks. It was a long, painful journey for us all but every step, every twist and turn, was essential. It was as if the funeral went on for the whole three weeks, communicated partly through Facebook between her hundreds of young friends, with everyone actively involved and connected from the start right through to the end of the ceremony and beyond. It has changed my own concept of the funeral out of all recognition, and mostly thanks to the young ones because they were so open.

What I did was something any celebrant could do. The only thing you need a funeral director for is a fridge big enough for a body (and even then, only when you can’t keep it in a hospital mortuary), and probably to sell you a coffin. It’s possible to find an obliging one if you explain yourself nicely – you don’t even have to be one of the family.

Just maybe, then, the answer is that the celebrants’ movement has to promote itself not to funeral directors but to the public, and to provide the full service ourselves? I trained in funeral advice and arranging with Green Fuse (one of the bracketed F.Ds above, see their website), and that’s how I managed it – it’s easier than you’d think. So how about it, fellow celebrants?

It may alienate some funeral directors, but they’re not the boss. The purpose of the likes of Charles’s blog, as I see it, is to help us enlighten and empower the grieving public, at or long before the funeral. Celebrants are so much better at ceremony than most funeral directors, and it doesn’t make sense to hand the vital function of making the arrangements to someone who doesn’t truly understand the chaotic evolution of grieving in the early days, and isn’t committed to putting a family’s changing needs before his own. Funeral directors could do it, obviously, but do they? Mostly not. And we can’t wait for them. This is one area where time really is short.

We are in the early days of a funerary revolution, begun perhaps by the Natural Death Centre, the Humanists and others, and now largely in the hands of liberal independents (us). There’s no-one in charge except ourselves and the families we work for. It’s only our own habit that limits us to others’ habits, and we can envisage and accomplish anything we want, however apparently outlandish or arduous, with enough imagination and commitment. There are plenty of us if we want to begin it. This is more than just a job to most of us.

Wouldn’t you throw yourself down in the path of Destiny to pave the way for Death? Of course you would. We can come together and promote the reality of the Celebrant/Funeral Director. I’ve started already, with the help, support and training of Green Fuse, and it’s so, so much more rewarding than the ‘damage limitation’ job I see myself doing over and over again, trying to make the ceremony good enough to compensate for the (poor family’s lack of involvement in the) same old superficial ritual. I’m up for it if you are.

Jonathan Taylor

jmtaylor55@yahoo.co.uk

Pugnacious priests and supine celebrants

10 November 2009
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: celebrants

A little while ago a United Reformed Church minister wrote this:

I’ve had a bit of a narrow escape : I’m doing a funeral today and went to see the family three days ago. As I was leaving the house, something they said suggested that they had requested that “the curtain should not be closed”. I checked, and it was true. The funeral director had not passed on this important bit of information, and they had not specifically asked me. It sort of slipped out by accident … So we could have had a situation where they suddenly found themselves, at the most sensitive point of the service, facing a closing curtain they didn’t expect. I was not happy, and have raised it with the funeral director concerned.

I suggested to the funeral director that rather than putting the idea of leaving out the Committal into people’s heads they should leave it to the family themselves to suggest it – at least, as long as it is a Christian funeral to be conducted by me as a Christian minister. The response was that ‘some families prefer it’. Choice is everything . . .

As far as I am aware, there is no Christian funeral liturgy or service that misses out the Committal : I feel the funeral directors are overstepping their boundary in deciding what the content of a Christian service should be. The funeral director was under the impression that ‘the Committal’ was the name given to ‘the whole service’; I think that ‘the Committal’ is that bit of the service (around which the whole thing revolves psychologically) which starts with the words “Therefore . . we commit his/her body to . . etc.” and is followed by the lowering of the coffin or the closing of the curtain.

Take out an act of committal of any sort and, it seems to me, you’re left not with a funeral service but a service of thanksgiving. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s not a funeral. In a funeral we stare death down in the light of faith. The curtain, for me, has particularly strong resonance … It is very appropriate to be left staring at a curtain.


 For myself I have said to the funeral director concerned that if they know they are going to ask me to conduct the funeral

> that they do not suggest to the family that they leave out the Committal, or offer it as a ‘choice’. It is my job, not the funeral director’s, to discuss with the family the content of a Christian funeral, and though I’m happy to accommodate their wishes, I would rather they made an informed decision.

What I am uneasy about is funeral directors deciding what is and what isn’t a Christian funeral and then either presenting me with a fait accompli, or (worse) creating a situation where I unwittingly cause pastoral hurt.

It’s bad enough that they sell printed orders to people and are pressing me for the order of service before I’ve even had a chance to meet the family. It seems they want it both ways :

> they assume that the order of service is predetermined such that I can tell them what it is before consulting the family. (As a URC minister I can be a lot more flexible than that). But . .

> feel that they can offer the family (but not me) choice over whether to include an essential element of a Christian funeral.

On the same theme, I have just come across this in the Australian ChristianToday:

Mark Tronson, a Baptist minister, was recently asked by a bereaved family to conduct the funeral as a Christian service … However, Mark Tronson was distressed when the family told him that the funeral directors had contacted them twice, trying to persuade them to have a civil celebrant conduct the service. Further, the funeral home representative had made several calls to different family members in an attempt to control the service program.

Christian ministers had been reporting this sense of this ‘being pushed aside’ for some time now, saying that they, too, had been surprised and in the end had to establish their stamp of authority.

In his particular case, to spare the family any more stress in their delicate situation, Tronson had to make it very clear to the funeral home representative that the service was now in his hands, full stop. Moreover, no further contact on this subject was to be discussed by the funeral home representative to any member of the bereaved family other than himself as the Minister.

It appears that the civil celebrant industry may be tied to the management of the funeral homes, who may therefore like to retain control. In this way, the funeral directors have a more straightforward task, in that they do not have to contend with the requirements of the wide and varied forms of community farewells, as expressed by ministers or leaders of the other religions from around the world.

The Christian community needs to be made aware that they can insist on whatever service they like, they do not have to accede to the suggestion of the funeral directors.

The rise of the secular celebrant, whether humanist or semi-religious, is regarded as a good thing, but complacently so. In the UK funeral directors have been incredibly slow to understand that a good secular celebrant makes them look good (for all that a bad funeral director could never make a good celebrant look bad). In the dawning light of that understanding, they have been incredibly slow to bring them utterly under their control.

The relationship between funeral directors and priests was always based in deference—rather like that between sergeant major and commanding officer. They occupied different classes and so, this being Britain, separate worlds. Status was firmly established, as were boundaries. There may or may not have been mutual respect, but that’s another matter entirely.

That demarcated relationship has clearly begun to break down. Funeral directors no longer know where their job ends. Secular celebrants, too, get fed up with them telling them what their clients want in the ceremony. Mind your own bloody business!

More sinister, though, is the way that celebrants in Australia, where the secular movement has been going longer, are now being subsumed and enslaved by the funeral homes.

Given the supine and sycophantic way in which our own celebrants behave, it’ll be happening here any time soon.

Spirituality in contemporary funerals

12 October 2009
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: celebrants, ceremony

There’s some interesting research work going on at the University of Hull. This is what they’re up to:

This project reflects the growing interest in spirituality which we are seeing in society generally and the changing shape of modern funerals. We are interested, for example, to see what the ‘spiritual’ content of a so-called ‘alternative’ funeral on the one hand and a traditional Christian or Buddhist ceremony might be; how people, as individuals and communities, express their spiritual feelings and beliefs and the meanings they attach to particular practices and symbols.

Why do they think it’s important?

It will contribute to knowledge and theory in a changing field which is also of increasing public concern. It will also assist in refining the practical responses of professionals involved with mourners, and with dying and bereaved people in their creation of ceremonies and rituals which help people in their bereavement.

Here’s how they are doing it:

Subject to gaining the informed consent of all participants, we will first attend the meeting of the funeral director with the family when arrangements for the funeral are discussed. Then we will observe about fifty funerals of different types. At a suitable time after the funeral (perhaps one week) we will interview one or more family members about why they chose the funeral they did, the meaning it had for them and how it helped them with their loss. Finally, having analysed the funerals and family interviews, we propose to interview a sample of funeral directors and celebrants to obtain their views on emerging themes.

You can see how they’re getting on by reading the progress reports at the foot of the web page.

Interesting to note that, having attended 39 out of the fifty funerals they have set themselves, they are no longer finding anything new. For all the talk of grieving people reclaiming funerals from funeral directors and priests and creating life-centred ceremonies as unique as the life lived — ceremonies which articulate and express the personal and possibly idiosyncratic values and spirituality of the person who has died — the new paradigm has in most cases evolved into a new bog standard—a palatable, emotionally manageable ceremony served up by a second-rate celebrant comprising a handful of banalities tossed in a Henry Scott Hollandaise sauce, a eulogy spiced with a few nice jokes, the whole washed down with some saccharine Andrea Bocelli. Ritual comfort food.

Starkness and drama. Love and lamentation. The strong sense of a silver cord loosed, a golden bowl broken, a life ended. The emotional reality of a date with eternity. All missing.

The public’s right to be right

3 June 2009
Charles
No comments
Categories: celebrants

Ask them and they’ll tell you. What do clients want?

Choice.

Funeral directors have got the message. They’re doing the lip-service. How do they stand on delivery?

Not terribly well, most of them, and for sound business reasons. As soon as you start to unbundle funerals and let clients source their own merchandise and service providers, it’s not just your margins that wilt, it’s your whole raison d’être. Undertakers assert their indispensability by creating dependency in clients and providers. Thrall is all. I’ve blogged about this before. I don’t want to bore you.

But I am happy to bore you about celebrants again. They’re important. And the recent arrival of the brilliant funeralcelebrants.org.uk website ought to, both, enable them to achieve the emancipation they deserve and also require them to compete. How’s it doing?

The good news is that it’s filling up fast. The British Humanist Association has bought into it bigtime. So has the InterFaith Ministry. The Association of Independent Celebrants’ members clearly know a good thing when they see it: a number of them have bought premium listings. But I can see no member of the Institute of Civil Celebrants. Why on earth not?

Most entries are too terse to be descriptive. I could find no photos or YouTube videos. So: little evidence of competition yet—but it’s early days.

The funeralcelebrants website empowers consumers. It enables them to choose the celebrant best suited to them. It will, therefore, prevail.

But it takes three to tango. The public needs to know about this resource. Funeral directors must start telling them about it (because good celebrants make funeral directors look good).

And celebrants, you’ve simply got to stop sucking up to funeral directors and behaving like supplicants. If you really are serious about consumer choice you will, when any funeral director rings and asks you to do a funeral, respond with this question: “Did the family choose me or have you assigned me?” You will refuse to be assigned. To make this work you’ll need to establish solidarity with other celebrants in your area.

If you really think you’re any good you will relish competition because it brings out the best in you. What’s more, you will enjoy a warmer welcome and a far more fruitful working relationship with a family which has actively chosen you.

You think you’ve got a choice between, in Milton’s words, “bondage with ease” and “strenuous liberty”? You haven’t. The market will decide, and it always plumps for strenuous liberty.

Something to celebrate

27 April 2009
Charles
No comments
Categories: celebrants

A while back I blogged about celebrants. The essence of my argument was that people do not get to choose their celebrant from the range available locally because funeral directors, who like to hold all service providers in their thrall, do not offer them a selection.

Very soon they’ll have no choice. There’s now an excellent website which enables people to type in their postcode and instantly survey all the celebrants in their area.

Funeral directors: sit up and take notice, please! And hospices and bereavement officers!

Celebrants: register!

If you are looking for a celebrant, have a look. The website also describes the various organisations which train celebrants.