Death in the community
Beyond the unappetising business of flogging pre-need plans to the tottering classes, undertakers do next to nothing to educate the public about funerals. They seek to be seen as public-spirited. They do good stunts, raise money for the hospice here, the air ambulance there. But how many stage events to raise awareness of the […]
We gonna celebrate your party with you… (Kool and the Gang)
Posted by Sweetpea Am I alone in sensing a nasty niff? The vague whiff, perhaps, of a fashionable diktat in the air? I know it’s not really the done thing, but I have to confess to feeling a little oppressed by the phrase ‘celebration of life’. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a celebratory kinda […]
Uncle Arthur
Posted by Ariadne For an altar there was the chest of drawers in the corner by the window. Flowers, candles, drawings and sea urchin shells collected from the beach. The bedroom had turquoise walls or perhaps they were white and it’s just memory doing the decorating. When everything was right and ready, I made my […]
The Work of the People
By Vale Some words seem problematic for the secularist. There was a good to-and-fro recently about ‘ritual’ on the blog a while ago and, in Funerals Without God, Jane Wilson says (a little sniffily to my mind) that Humanists talk about ‘ceremonies’ rather than ‘services’ because ceremonies are about celebration and mutual support while ‘service’ merely […]
Sage endorsement?
By Jonathan Taylor From ‘Why We Die’, by Dr Richard Steinpach. Arthur Koestler (Der Mensch: Irrlaufer der Evolution) says: “ ‘Self-assertion versus Integration… exists in biology, psychology, ecology, and wherever we encounter complex hierarchical systems, thus practically everywhere we look. In the living animal or the living plant each part must assert its individuality just as in […]
On Being a Funeral Celebrant
Here I am, somehow standing in for this person we have all gathered to honour and farewell. I have listened to family and friends, asked questions to elicit the fullest picture, the roundest sense of the life at the centre of our ritual. And here I am, holding it all, the balance of dignity and […]
Funerals are for…
Four comments here from this article in yesterday’s Guardian. Organising the funeral for my 17 year old son, who died in an accident overseas in Sept 2008, was made vastly easier by the wonderfully kind funeral director and an equally wonderful C of E Canon – a Canon whose first words on meeting us were […]
Are you a lightning rod?
The last time I directed you to the Hearth of Mopsus blog you were mostly pretty beastly about the writer, a clerk in holy orders who has the cure of souls in Swanvale Halt. Here’s what you said. He’s actually a bit of a sweetie, and if you like reading clerics’ diaries (I do), then […]
Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye
Me and the missus are getting down to some serious death planning. There’s no best time of life for doing this, of course, so long as you get it done afore ye croak. And the more I think about it, the more clearly I can see that it’s not an activity whose end result is, […]
The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away
Here’s an extract from the blog of a religious minister (clerk in holy orders, he terms himself). I like his rigour. Very bracing. You wouldn’t expect me to enjoy humanist funeral services very much. Perhaps ‘enjoyment’ isn’t the right word for funerals anyway, but you know what I mean. I’ve been to a couple and […]
