They fit into a spread hand, yet reach into eternity
Posted by Rupert Callender, owner of The Green Funeral Company. As human beings, we look for meaning everywhere, superimposing it over everything that comes into our lives. The Australian aborigines believe that the world was vocalised into existence, literally sung into creation, and that the song needs to be continued so that reality can flourish. […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Where do you stand on funeral pyres?
The Natural Death Centre, veteran pioneer of the better, greener funerals movement, passionately and vocally campaigns for open-air cremation on sustainably sourced wood pyres. If you want to find out why, be patient, I’ll give you the link in a minute. Where do you stand on funeral pyres? Do you embrace them or would you […]
Crestone End-of-Life Project
Crestone Colorado is a bit like Totnes on steroids. It is home to all manner of nice folk and all sorts of religious communities. Alternative. (To capitalism on steroids). Crestone is home to one of only two legal open-air cremation sites in the US. That’s two better than the UK, where open-air cremation was declared […]
Memorialisation option
Edward John Trelawny’s Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author is, according to blogger Pykk: a gossipy, wayward, autobiographical book by a moustach’d Romantic who tracked down both poets in 1822 and stayed with them for a while by the Mediterranean. He was still there when Shelley died, and alert enough to rescue the poet’s unburnt […]
Burning issue
There was much excitement when Davender Ghai won his case for open-air cremation at the Court of Appeal in February 2010. It established the legality of the principle of open-air cremation but, as Rupert Callender noted at the time: “this is only a battle that has been won, not the war. The next impenetrable ring […]
The feminine touch
According to Hindu custom it has always been the duty of the eldest son or senior male relative to light a funeral pyre. Here in Britain, it is very rare indeed for a female to be one of the small group to witness a dead person being loaded into the cremator. But, I was interested […]
Something else for the weekend
Here’s a lovely story about how they did things in a braver and more beautiful age. The occasion is the unveiling of a memorial on Patcham Down to the 53 Indian soldiers who died in the first world war. It stands just yards (metres for younger readers) from the Chattri Memorial, which stands on the […]
Not just for the skint
Nice home funeral story here: When Cathleen, a registered nurse, passed away at Hinds Hospice in Fresno, no mortuary was called due to previous planning. The Fresno County Coroner’s Office transported her to their facility and kept her until her funeral Jan. 26. The morning of her funeral, she was placed in a silk-lined pine […]
Open air funerals are go!
In the light of yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgement in favour of Davender Ghai and anyone else who wants to be cremated on a funeral pyre, Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company, and a Trustee of the Natural Death Centre, has this to say: The verdict this Wednesday from the High Court accepting the […]
