Who is mimicking who?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Two seasonal events coming up: the Nine Lessons and Carols is a traditional Christmas Eve ceremony, the most famous and widely broadcast being the service from King’s College, Cambridge; and Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, is showing for 10 nights in December at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. A rationalist celebration of […]
Funerals as psychotwaddle
Writing about contemporary American memorial services (ashes optional), Thomas Long describes a funerary trend that some might discern in contemporary British celebration of life funerals — if you subscribe to his bracingly reactionary death-view: Even when they are crafted by caring people who are full of goodwill, these services often lack coherence. At their worst […]
Funerals must address dreams, too
In an excellent article in the Christian Century, the Rev Samuel Wells, an American, describes taking a British funeral. There are lessons here for clergy, funeral celebrants and undertakers. And so it was that I was called to preside at the funeral of Michael. Michael had had a difficult life. He had Duchenne muscular dystrophy. […]
David Abel answers his critics
If funeral celebrants suffer from anxiety, that is not surprising. In addition to job anxiety, because they exist at the beck and call of undertakers, and financial anxiety because they must resign themselves to the vagaries of the mortality rate, there comes with the job, also, a degree of social anxiety — just try […]
Short shrift for the overreachers
You probably missed all this and, in truth, had you been aware, you might have either snorted derisively or, like me, mischievously hung on in there for a bit to see what happened next. I’ll tell you the story now. It’s about a bunch of funeral celebrants who went off on one and had to […]
A eulogy sandwich is not enough to nourish grief
As Jenny Uzell embarks on a series of posts which will consider the knotty question, What Is A Funeral For? it’s worth reflecting on what has been a game of two halves, funeralwise, in the last fortnight. Two people have expressed contrasting approaches to a funeral. First, there was Dave Smith, who arranged the funeral […]
Can we agree to differentiate?
Ed’s note: Here’s your chance to interrogate the BHA on humanist funerals. If you’ve something to say, say it. Hannah or another BHA representative will respond. Guest post by Hannah Hart from the British Humanist Association explains the basics about humanist funerals, what happens at them and how they are organised. The 2011 census showed […]
Come on, it’s not rocket science
Churchill was mulling over a cabinet appointment, weighing up the merits of a candidate. Glancing towards his principal private secretary he enquired: “What about So-and-so?” The PPS murmured: “Simply won’t do, Prime Minister.” They talked like that, then. They understood the thermonuclear power of understatement. That same PPS might have pronounced the same judgement on […]
You tried
One for you celebrants. In a deceptively ‘unclever’ eulogy for James Gandolfini, David Chase, creator and head writer of the Sopranos, offered this thought about the subordinate value of coherence in speechmaking: I remember how you [Gandolfini] did speeches. I saw you do a lot of them at awards shows and stuff, and invariably you […]
Undertakers feast on misery, situation normal
There’s a story in the Scottish Daily Mail, 7 June, that exemplifies very well the misinformation and scaremongering that are characteristic of media treatment of funerals in the UK. Here it is: LOCAL authorities and funeral directors are making money out of family misery, with ‘the cost of dying’ reaching thousands of pounds in Scotland, […]
