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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Against Cremation
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
I think that a large part of the consolation that people have from the funeral of a loved one is the knowledge that "it's what s/he would have wanted..."
I've often seen this being a large part of the consolation in allowing the relative a dignified death in hospital... another discussion, I know, but distinct parrallels.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Isaac David:
...Burial, preceded where possible by lying in the open casket, shows respect for the body and for the person....
Why the open coffin? I'm really curious, because I don't get this one At All.
I know it's important to a lot of people to have a "viewing." (One friend of mine got very upset when I said I had forbidden my family to put out my body for Show and Tell; she said, "But then we won't be able to say goodbye to you!") But all that pancake makeup and rose-colored light business, trying to make a dead person look merely asleep, with their hair unnaturally neat, really bothers me. I prefer my memories of the living person to remain intact, and not colored by the memory of the mannequin in the box.
Before we were married, I told my husband the same thing my mother told my father: "If you put my body on display, I'll haunt you for the rest of your life." I meant it, too. It's not a fear-of-death thing; I just don't like it. I especially don't like it when children are dragged along and subsequently suffer nightmares.
Ross
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
(1) Cares deeply about the body and the physical - whether I do or not.
I resent your implication that I care about neither. I do. But I think my responsiblity for my body stops when I die (which does not exclude me making provisions for my funeral, but I'll be in no position to see they are carried out).
quote:
(2) Accepts that death is both distressing and necessary to contemplate. Funerals are indeed a time for grief, quite overt grief actually.
As above. I don't see how what I said contradicts this. If I were to dictate I'm to be buried surrounded by a troupé of topless chanting pom-pom girls to an accompaniment of fireworks and some unsuitably ribald soundtrack, I think any would-be mourners might find that distressing. There is plenty to be distressed about at a funeral apart from the death itself, and I would prefer all distress in that category to be minimised.
quote:
(3) The funeral isn't of course about the deceased's "comfort." He / she is dead. But neither is it simply and only therapy for the mourners.
You are misrepresenting me. I was careful in what I said (emphasis mine)
quote:
It's not just the deceased's personal comfort that's at issue here, it's what it's like for the mourners - the ceremony is primarily for their benefit.
In the mean time, since you're back on this thread, perhaps you'd like to respond to my earlier question about whether, on the basis of Scripture and, at a guess, the Fathers, and some 4000 years of tradition, you are in favour of slavery...
My christianity doesn't reject tradition, but it remembers that some have nullified the word of God for its sake.
[ 22. August 2006, 18:26: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Scot
Deck hand
# 2095
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Posted
Psyduck, I think you are creating a meaning that doesn't really exist by drawing a significant distinction between "I don't care what they do with my body" versus "I don't care what they do with me." Yes, a philosphical difference can be read into the wording, but I doubt that there is any difference in the generally intended meaning.
Certainly there is no such difference when I have used those phrases. As an English-speaking embodied consciousness, when I say "me" I may be speaking of my body, my personality, my spirit, or the entire package. Without asking me, you must rely on context to know which is correct. In the context of a debate of what to do with dead bodies, I am most likely speaking of my physical body. Of course, everyone's intended meaning might not be the same as mine, so I would hesitate to make broad assumptions on the basis of such an ambiguous phrase.
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“Here, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” - Thomas Jefferson
Posts: 9515 | From: Southern California | Registered: Jan 2002
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
mdijon: quote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Psyduck:
I think that a large part of the consolation that people have from the funeral of a loved one is the knowledge that "it's what s/he would have wanted..."
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I've often seen this being a large part of the consolation in allowing the relative a dignified death in hospital... another discussion, I know, but distinct parrallels.
I quite agree.
Maybe that's why this whole area affects me rather. From the perspective of a grief-stricken family and friends, who are desperate to do something to give meaning to the trauma of their specific loss of this person, and to do it in ways which have a continuity of meaning with what this person was, and meant to them, it is often crucial that they have a sense that what they are going to do has continuity with what that person really wanted.
From their point of view, a jolly "Oh, just flush me down the toilet like the goldfish!" may bring a wan chuckle at uncle Fred's pawky sense of humour - but it's not much help.
In fact - and this is related to my earlier point - it boils down to uncle Fred refusing to deal with what his family and friends are having to deal with. And I still think that there's a strong prima facie case that uncle Fred is basically refusing to look at one (at least!) of the implications of his own mortality.
It also means that he's cheating his family and friends of a way of coping with his death that only he could have given them. "I want this to happen. Because this is my death. It's your feelings - but it's your feelings because it's my death..."
Some of my family and friends are agnostics. What if every one of them were? I'm not. I've lived out my life in an understanding which frames it in the great Christian drama of redemption. They might very well want, when I'm gone, to "celebrate my life". Fair enough. But they won't be taking me seriously as the person they knew if that's how they decide my passing is to be marked. It's not for them. It's for me. And d'you know what? They know that. And in the end, that's what will help them in their grief. It's only if I were to be bloody stupid enough to tell them that I don't care what they do that they will be left without their own - not mine, but their own framework of grieving. Otherwise, when they "celebrate my life" in the pub, or the Indian, after the funeral, they will know that they didn't just wallow in their own sadness, but they took me seriously as who I was. That's what'll console them.
And it would be mutatis mutandiswith me for any one of them. I'll celebrate their life, and listen to their music, in the funeral they wanted. And I'll go home afterwards and pray for them on my own, knowing I respected them for what they were by doing what they wanted.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Ferijen
Shipmate
# 4719
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
quote:
Originally posted by Isaac David:
...Burial, preceded where possible by lying in the open casket, shows respect for the body and for the person....
Why the open coffin? I'm really curious, because I don't get this one At All.
I know it's important to a lot of people to have a "viewing." (One friend of mine got very upset when I said I had forbidden my family to put out my body for Show and Tell; she said, "But then we won't be able to say goodbye to you!") But all that pancake makeup and rose-colored light business, trying to make a dead person look merely asleep, with their hair unnaturally neat, really bothers me. I prefer my memories of the living person to remain intact, and not colored by the memory of the mannequin in the box.
Before we were married, I told my husband the same thing my mother told my father: "If you put my body on display, I'll haunt you for the rest of your life." I meant it, too. It's not a fear-of-death thing; I just don't like it. I especially don't like it when children are dragged along and subsequently suffer nightmares.
Ross
I might be completely misinterpreting things... does mean that the majority of the funerals in the States open casket funerals then? But funerals where cremation is involved tends to be about burying the ashes, rather than disposing of a 'full' casket?
Posts: 3259 | From: UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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Isaac David
Accidental Awkwardox
# 4671
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The destruction happens anyway, whichever method is used.
But human agency makes a difference. I assume you don't wish to be dispatched when you get old and begin to lose your marbles because you're going to die anyway.
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Isaac the Idiot
Forget philosophy. Read Borges.
Posts: 1280 | From: Middle Exile | Registered: Jun 2003
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Laura
General nuisance
# 10
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ferijen:
I might be completely misinterpreting things... does mean that the majority of the funerals in the States open casket funerals then? But funerals where cremation is involved tends to be about burying the ashes, rather than disposing of a 'full' casket?
It's a regional thing, and it's a depends on your denomination thing. Orthodox funerals are often open casket. Southern funerals, at least in the tradition prevailing in the region my Dad's from, are often open casket, though it's not obligatory by any means. I didn't mind seeing several of those relatives posthumously, but I don't want it for myself. If you're used to it, it doesn't really upset older children (at least not in my experience).
[ 22. August 2006, 19:04: Message edited by: Laura ]
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm
Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Isaac David:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The destruction happens anyway, whichever method is used.
But human agency makes a difference. I assume you don't wish to be dispatched when you get old and begin to lose your marbles because you're going to die anyway.
Hard to think that murder vs natural death are appropriate parrallels for cremation vs burial.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
quote:
Originally posted by Isaac David:
...Burial, preceded where possible by lying in the open casket, shows respect for the body and for the person....
Why the open coffin? I'm really curious, because I don't get this one At All.
I know it's important to a lot of people to have a "viewing." (One friend of mine got very upset when I said I had forbidden my family to put out my body for Show and Tell; she said, "But then we won't be able to say goodbye to you!") But all that pancake makeup and rose-colored light business, trying to make a dead person look merely asleep, with their hair unnaturally neat, really bothers me. I prefer my memories of the living person to remain intact, and not colored by the memory of the mannequin in the box.
Before we were married, I told my husband the same thing my mother told my father: "If you put my body on display, I'll haunt you for the rest of your life." I meant it, too. It's not a fear-of-death thing; I just don't like it. I especially don't like it when children are dragged along and subsequently suffer nightmares.
Ross
I haven't seen any make-up on our family bodies, in open coffins either at home or in church, or even in the crem; the funeral director closes them at the appropriate time.
It's really a good part of grieving to be able to go up to the open coffin in church and say goodbye, give a final kiss to the person's body...
More and more, I am reading different ways of "treating" the body in different sides of the Atlantic. What about in Australasia?
And here in the UK, when we've been to West Indian type christian funerals, the coffin is always open in church, and the men go off to the cemetry and everyone joins in lowering the coffin and digging up the earth put there by the workers at the cemetry, and there is constant christian singing until it's all filled in. Does that happen in the USA?
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
"I want this to happen. Because this is my death. It's your feelings - but it's your feelings because it's my death..."
Although for me, that involves a fairly strong preference for cremation. If it just wasn't possible, or it would cause distress to relatives, I guess I could live the alternative... (wait for it)... but my own personal view is that I quite like the idea of being cremated and scattered. Somewhere open and without a clear landmark.
I don't think that is a nihilistic interpretation... or a denial of the resurrection... in fact for me, it symbolises my view of the life to come and my hope in it.
[ 22. August 2006, 19:13: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
Ferijen, I haven't seen an open-casket funeral (from my limited experience, in the northeast USA). What is common is open-casket visiting hours at a funeral home (parlor, institution). (Hmmm, except if the funeral is then conducted in the funeral home, oops, I can't remember if they normally close the casket first or not.)
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
I'm always amazed how comforting it is to the families I prepare funerals with if there's something - anything - that they know is what the deceased wanted. Even just a hymn. And how at a loss they feel if they have no clue as to what the deceased wanted - in other words, if they have to guess, and "might have got it wrong." I think this probably goes for secular funerals as well. I think that a large part of the consolation that people have from the funeral of a loved one is the knowledge that "it's what s/he would have wanted..."
Yes, I think this is a very large aspect.
I think over-specification of funeral rites can be a denial of death as much as a refusal to specify. And either one (over- or under-specification) can be reflective of many other things instead.
Thinking more precisely about people I know in the "I don't care" set, they actually do care, and actually say something slightly different. What the people I know say is: don't put on a big show with the body and spend a lot of money on gussying it up with makeup and a fancy coffin. A positive assertion of where resources should be put.
Some people who say this also don't see the social value of funeral rites to the grieving survivors, or don't believe that they really will have anyone close who will be grieving. I wouldn't call that fear or lack of acknowledgement of their own death per se. Blindness about how other people handle emotions (in the first case), and blindness or disappointment about their connection to other people (in the second case), but not death-phobia or -avoidance.
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Isaac David
Accidental Awkwardox
# 4671
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
as for saying his Christianity is quite different on the basis of his attitude to funeral rites ... breathtaking.
But not surprising. Debates between Orthodox and non-Orthodox sometimes put me in mind of the saying, that the UK and the USA are two nations divided by a common language. Similarities in the surface structures of different traditions can often mask deeper theological differences; superficial differences can also hide deeper commonalities. That is both the joy and the risk of ecumenical encounter.
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Isaac the Idiot
Forget philosophy. Read Borges.
Posts: 1280 | From: Middle Exile | Registered: Jun 2003
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
You are right, unsurprising, if breathtaking.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
Thinking of the suggestion that burial gives more concrete representation the the survivors of the finality of death: not if the coffin is not lowered into the grave after the commital ceremony until after everyone has left. I'm not sure if this is a cemetery-insurance deal, a prettying-up of the "let's not distress the family with showing that it really is final and their loved one is gone" sort, simple local custom, or what.
But in my extensive graveside experience (two, irony meter on), I haven't seen a coffin lowered.
Also coffins are frequently rolled into the church on a wheeled stretcher, so there's no reality to what the pallbearers are doing.
So although certain kinds of symbolism might be available with a coffin, it's not always actually used.
It comes down for me simply to logistics, more than one way or the other is the better way to do it, and arranging what is needed within that to best support and represent our religious and cultural framework.
I don't find cremation to be innately disrespectful of the body, though. Pulling one's innards out through their nostrils for embalming, is where I'd start, if I were going to find anything about funeral rites problematic.
(Unfortunately, culturally for me the open casket visiting hours seem important, even if simply to acknowledge "this pancaked mannequin is no longer Beloved N, but merely their body which they have left" so innards-through-my-nostrils is probably going to be on order. Although, Father Gregory, is part of the incarnation supposed to be that the body still is Beloved N, even though their soul is elsewhere? I find the mystery of seeing a body without the soul present to be an enigma to me, but a common reaction does seem to be, "this is not N any more."
Ruminating...
Do you (general you) think it's possible to shop funeral homes for one that applies makeup tastefully and minimally? or even not at all? I wouldn't mind people seeing what a real dead body looked like, but I don't want them smitten with a decaying body. I think. Unless a real unmadeup dead body really does look too unnerving.)
I don't think one can make a blanket statement one way or the other about open caskets and viewings. Some people, including some adults, will find it unnerving; others, including some children, will find it helpful. Count me in the latter group -- although in a recent case, even having seen the body, while it wasn't unnerving, I still can't really believe he's dead.
[ 22. August 2006, 19:38: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Isaac David
Accidental Awkwardox
# 4671
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Hard to think that murder vs natural death are appropriate parallels for cremation vs burial.
Marvin the Martian has created the parallel by advancing an argument which can be applied equally to both cases; i.e. if something happens anyway, it is legitimate to quicken the process by intervening. The fact of human intervention can make a crucial, moral difference.
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Isaac the Idiot
Forget philosophy. Read Borges.
Posts: 1280 | From: Middle Exile | Registered: Jun 2003
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
It's a regional thing, and it's a depends on your denomination thing. Orthodox funerals are often open casket. Southern funerals, at least in the tradition prevailing in the region my Dad's from, are often open casket, though it's not obligatory by any means. I didn't mind seeing several of those relatives posthumously, but I don't want it for myself. If you're used to it, it doesn't really upset older children (at least not in my experience).
Most funerals I've attended have not had open coffins (except a couple I had to sing at, which took place at an undertaker's establishment), but the "wake" or "visitation" usually features the corpse lying in its box.
I think a lot of it's what you're used to. My family just doesn't do open coffins, period. Once going to a funeral when I was in my early 20s, I found myself clutching and being clutched by a Jewish colleague -- who was having a similar reaction of shocked surprise -- when we walked into the narthex of a Lutheran church and saw our dead colleague lying there with the lid up.
My husband's (East Coast RC) family does do open coffins at the visitation. We took some heat for declining to take our Senior Child, then aged 5, to her grandfather's funeral, since we knew of their custom. My sister-in-law and her husband took their son, then 7 1/2, and he had nightmares afterward.
I mostly stayed out of the room where the visitation was taking place and played with our two-year-old niece, thus freeing my sister-in-law to receive all the old friends. (The two-year-old kept talking about "that doll," by which she meant the body of her grandfather.) I WAS disturbed, on the morning of the funeral, when they called us by name to walk up next to the body and "pay our last respects" before they sealed it up. I was left wishing that the undertakers had put a better-quality rosary in the old man's hands. (And my sister-in-law and husband very kindly told the puzzled undertakers to let people go up on their own steam for my mother-in-law's funeral the next year.)
Ross
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by me:
It comes down for me simply to logistics, more than one way or the other is the better way to do it, and arranging what is needed within that to best support and represent our religious and cultural framework.
I was unclear a bit -- I meant I don't think non-cremation or cremation is ipso facto better.
If a coffin is present, I absolutely have very strong opinions about the logistics: at the funeral it ought to really be carried by the pallbearers, and at the committal it ought really to be lowered into the earth and have dirt put on it. But even there I recognize that logistics may intervene e.g. in terms of having people able to really carry the coffin up the aisle etc.
And since I haven't picked out a preferred final resting place for me (in particular, my church's memorial garden or not? and do my siblings have a preference?), at the moment I don't care whether I'm buried or cremated, nor, if I were cremated, what is done with my ashes. I think really the best thing to do is give my body to medical research, but so far that is the one thought I find unnerving. Even though I won't be there while I'm being dissected, having morgue-humor jokes made necessary to the survival of doctors-in-training, etc.
( ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) deconstruct that last sentence, Psyduck. Actually seriously, I'd be curious what your view is on that set of uses of "I", even if I'm not always convinced.)
OK, I'll shut up for a bit about funerals.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Laura
General nuisance
# 10
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Posted
Oh, sorry. I've never seen an open-casket funeral. The casket was open for the visitations, and closed for the service.
What was weird was all the people sliding up to give condolences and saying how great she looked. I kept wanting to say, "apart from the whole being dead thing". ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm
Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
Although (really, my last on funerals. For at least 15 minutes) I do have preferences about other funeral things besides my body, which I would express, not with a "you must do this" but a "this is what I like" precisely to help my family in the "what would AR have liked." And also because knowing my family, the less they have to argy-bargy about making decisions and just follow a preset plan, probably the better; although I know I can't alas guarantee there won't be any argy-bargy-ing either. ![[Frown]](frown.gif) . I can only try to make them whatever gift I can.
And (to try to be analytical for the sake of the OP) is any of this denying the Christian hope of resurrection, acknowledgement of the incarnation, agony of the passion? I don't think so. (Sorry, that's as analytical as I get. But if someone thinks it is denying those aspects, I'd be curious to hear the reasoning. Seriously.)
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
...Do you (general you) think it's possible to shop funeral homes for one that applies makeup tastefully and minimally? or even not at all? I wouldn't mind people seeing what a real dead body looked like, but I don't want them smitten with a decaying body. I think. Unless a real unmadeup dead body really does look too unnerving.) ...
I think the amount of makeup required depends on the body and its condition. My in-laws had retired to Florida, but wanted to be buried in their native Baltimore, from a specific undertaker that always "did" that family. My husband took along a color photograph of his father, and he says that the undertaker almost melted with relief and gratitude when he pulled it out of his briefcase. AJ had been in cold storage for several days at that point, and that makes a difference. (See here for more details -- not for the weak of stomach, but mercifully unillustrated.)
You CAN shop ahead of time for an undertaking establishment that doesn't try to guilt survivors into spending a lot of money on the proceedings. You can also make "pre-need" arrangements with a cremation society.
(Apologies for the double post.)
Ross
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
Oh, sorry. I've never seen an open-casket funeral. The casket was open for the visitations, and closed for the service.
What was weird was all the people sliding up to give condolences and saying how great she looked. I kept wanting to say, "apart from the whole being dead thing".
That's standard.
Visitor: "I'm so sorry."
Bereaved: "Thank you for coming."
V: "She looks very good."
B: "Yes, doesn't she. Well, she's at peace now."
V: "Yes, she's at peace. She was a great woman."
B: "Yes, a great woman. She was suffering so, it's a comfort for her to be at peace."
V: "Yes, that's a comfort. She looks just like she's sleeping now."
Repeat ad infinitum times # of visitors times # of family.
[no need to apologize for double-posting Ross, as you can see a vast array of cross-posters have saved me from committing, oh, I don't know, a deca-post at least. hopefully this will distract from anyone noticing that I only held out for 6 minutes.]
[ 22. August 2006, 20:02: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
Thank you, AR, both for providing the standard script and for the absolution!
Ross
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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fabula rasa
Shipmate
# 11436
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Posted
Ross, I was interested to read your posts because I've had very different experience with children and corpses. I trained in a very "viewing-positive" (!) environment, where there was an open coffin in church (not the funeral home) generally the evening before the funeral, with a short, informal service of prayers. Children were encouraged to come, and say goodbye however they wanted--most chose to touch the corpse. (A lot liked to play with the hair!)
It was a very un-scary experience for them--in fact, most found it very reassuring, since it becomes so obvious that the corpse no longer, as it were, holds the person they knew. But I imagine that a child's reaction will depend very much on the general tenor of the event--in the cases I've cited, the adults all felt very comfortable, and allowed the children to find their own comfort level. It was also very much a communal experience--we were all there at the same time, which I imagine is different from being alone in a Viewing Room (or whatever they call them). In general, the children would then come to the funeral and the burial, and help throw dirt on the coffin. I only ever heard positive feedback from parents about this.
OTOH, I recently had a colleague who pretty much forced some teenagers to go in and look at their grandmother who had just died in her bed, which they found very traumatic. Apparently he implied that it was their "duty" to do it, and then aid some very formal prayers, all directed at keeping her hout of Hell. There was no one there to support the kids, and no prayers for the bereaved. I thought this sounded totally inappropriate was very angry indeed. (But said colleague comes from a very different background, so I suppose just needs to learn a bit more pastoral sensitivity!)
Posts: 465 | From: scepter'd isle | Registered: May 2006
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Rowen
Shipmate
# 1194
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Posted
As a clergy person in Australia, I would have done over 1500 funerals. My figures are well-educated guesses... applying to Protestant deaths.
About 85% were cremation. (Most common in Oz)
40% have a service in the church. Perhaps half of these may also have a short service at the grave-side or crem chapel to follow this, as the body finally goes away. (Neither of my parents wanted the second service).
60% would have a service in the crematorium chapel/funeral parlour chapel/cemetary chapel/graveside.
1% would have an open-casket during the service, at or public viewing before the service, although I know occasionaly family members may view the body at some stage.
At cremations, 0% would ever see any ovens... in other words, the coffin slides off on to a trolley, and all one would see is the coffin going backwards and be covered off by a curtain. Most ovens are at the back of the building anyway.
Only 1 body is burnt at a time.
Ashes are scrattered at a place determined by the family, or stored somewhere- maybe at a home or in a garden plot, or at a church, or in a cemetary wall. (We are intending to scatter my father's ashes from a light plane over the mountains near here. The plane will be piloted by my brother. All these things are symbolic of my Dad.)
I know some folk go and grieve at a plot, following burial, but I know lots of folk haven't.
Most Australians, in our population, have encountered the death of someone they care about.
Most have attended a cremation.
Most obviously have had a chance to work through their grief, despite the possible absence of a certain patch of earth in whichg a coffin is buried. Very few of us are overcome by grief forever because of this.
Most Australians would be disgusted by you, if you chose to tell us we treated our dead disrespectfully because of the way we chose to deal with the body after death.
Australian Funeral Homes are owned by individuals or companies based in the country. Owners talk disparagingly of the few USA companies who tried to muscle in in the 90s, with their "different ideas" of doing things, whatever they were. They are gone now.
I think it is a cultural thing- how death is "done". Several years ago, my Australian sister and her Hungarian/Canadian husband, who have lived in the USA for just over 30 years, were vacationing here in Oz. Back at home their only son died. They took the next flight back to the States.
Once there, they arranged the funeral according to what my sister said was the "Australian way" and not the USA Way. They got their minister to phone me, so I could explain about the non-viewing thing, the closed casket, the desire for simple services etc.
The Presbyterian minister seemed flummoxed. Finally I remembered how he had done missionary work in Africa earlier in his life. I reminded this man (whom I had never met in person) how tribal funerals were done differently, even if Christian- as they would reflect a certain culture. He agreed this was so. I asked him to imagine that my sister and b-in-law belonged to a different, and weird tribe - and he should act accordingly.
Apparently he did a good job, although he took it upon himself to welcome people to the service- and explain that he was doing things weirdly, because the family came from some strange cultural group....
I spent 8 years in the central part of my state, as a hospital chaplain. I did so many funerals, the locals called me the "Funeral Queen".
Earlier this month, I spent my birthday at a funeral home on our annual field trip with chaplaincy ministry students. We had a birthday cake and all.
Such is life!
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"May I live this day… compassionate of heart" (John O’Donoghue)...
Posts: 4897 | From: Somewhere cold in Victoria, Australia | Registered: Aug 2001
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HenryT
Canadian Anglican
# 3722
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
...Also coffins are frequently rolled into the church on a wheeled stretcher, so there's no reality to what the pallbearers are doing....
Based on my one experience as a pallbearer, we did do some significant lifting of the box. (500 lb of box, 90 lb of body, about!) IIRC, we lifted my friend's casket off the wheeled "carriage" at the funeral home, and into the hearse. At the church, the reverse, and back into the hearse. At the gravesite, we carried her about 30 metres from the hearse to the grave itself, and put the casket down on the lifting frame.
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"Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned" P. Henry, 1788
Posts: 7231 | From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Dec 2002
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
mdijon: quote:
quote:
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Originally posted by Psyduck:
"I want this to happen. Because this is my death. It's your feelings - but it's your feelings because it's my death..."
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Although for me, that involves a fairly strong preference for cremation. If it just wasn't possible, or it would cause distress to relatives, I guess I could live the alternative... (wait for it)... but my own personal view is that I quite like the idea of being cremated and scattered. Somewhere open and without a clear landmark.
I don't think that is a nihilistic interpretation... or a denial of the resurrection... in fact for me, it symbolises my view of the life to come and my hope in it.
I fear you may be conflating two things I said - or maybe three - and if you are, it's my fault. I do think that (1) certain ways of saying that one doesn't care what happens to one after one dies are perhaps expressive of a death-phobia, which is widely disseminated in our culture. (2) I also think that our death-phobic culture emphasizes the fate of the body after death as a waste-disposal problem, and basically just asks what the most efficient means of getting rid of the body is. (3) I also think that in many cases people are pressured into internalizing this demand of what Weber calls "instrumental" (i.e. means, rather than ends) rationality and reproducing it as a rather unconvincing acceptance of that rationality. "After all, it's only a body..." In other words, people are socially pressured into not resisting the ideology that funerals are elaborate bin-days. (I also need to make it clear that I don't think that many individuals personally embrace that view - but I do think that it is a widely-experienced circulating ideology in Western society that people feel they must conform to, rather like a form of political correctness.
I certainly do accept that for someone to say that they want their ashes scattered, and to articulate a deeply held meaning underlying this desire, is something to be respected.
I suspect that if you were to probe deeper, you would find that your understanding of the Resurrection is probably very closely related to your wish. It doesn't sound to me as though you can't think of any counter-arguments to offset the undeniable efficiency of the council's new crematorium, or that you see the fate of your body as a question on the same level as recycling or garden waste collection. You clearly have a thought-out preference grounded in an emotional logic and framed by an articulated belief.
But my broader point is that your loved ones would also surely find it a great comfort to know that these were your wishes. And that if, for example, Fr. G were one of your close friends, you wouldn't be thinking of making his obsequies conform to your wishes.
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Hooker's Trick
Admin Emeritus and Guardian of the Gin
# 89
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Posted
Cremation: If it was good enough for Caesar, it's good enough for me.
Posts: 6735 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: May 2001
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hooker's Trick:
Cremation: If it was good enough for Caesar, it's good enough for me.
It was good enough for Brunnhilde....
Ross
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Rowen: quote:
Once there, they arranged the funeral according to what my sister said was the "Australian way" and not the USA Way. They got their minister to phone me, so I could explain about the non-viewing thing, the closed casket, the desire for simple services etc...
The Presbyterian minister seemed flummoxed...( ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) )
Well, apparently my American, Piskie family does things in the (mostly) Australian way. Non-viewing, closed casket, simple service- check, check, check- for my mom's service. The only major difference was that my mom was buried.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
I know that the buriers here are an endangered minority and that itself is significant for it reflects the lack of confidence in our own Christian tradition when, historically it confronted the cremation movement in the 19th century. Many are incredulous here that I see the differences as touching on major differences in Christian doctrine ... but I stand by that. I will try to explain again but this time using one key issue to which Psyduck has alluded .... Death as Waste Disposal, (all done in the best possible taste of course).
Have you heard these comments before?
(1) The body is only a temporary house for the soul. The body is only the envelope, the shell, the packaging.
(2) When I'm dead I won't care so toss me out with the garbage.
(3) I don't want to be cooped up ... I want to be free, spread on the wind.
(2) and (3) are mutually exclusive of course and (2) is strictly a non sequitur ... not caring / not knowing / not existing has no information content so the choice made cannot be construed from the starting point, (any choice).
What all three share though is a dismissal of the enduring quality of the physical which accords well of course with the utilitarian concept of efficiency and timely despatch. By "enduring quality of the physical" I do NOT mean the flesh of the deceased which is corruptible and earthbound whatever the mode of committal. No, the enduring quality of the physical concerns the living AND the resurrected. Human life is quintessentially physical. We are not ghosts in the machine or temporary housings for the more enduring soul. That is why cremation is more usual in Hinduism. Theologically the body is indeed of no account and so Hindus and over-spiritualised Christians cremate. Jews and Christians, however, at least until the modern age insist on the holiness of matter ... the physical realm is sacramental for it is the divinely imprinted stuff of the Creator's hand. No brain, no mind, no soul. The soul is not the spiritual bit crowning the physical ... it is the whole person. And the whole person was and will be in its renewal what you see in that open coffin and what is then reseeded symbolically to the earth.
Little of this doctrinal infrastructure (if any at all) operates at the conscious level for most. It is indicated by the ritual ... the physical disposition of the body, the kiss of farewell, the tears, the soil, the wind and rain by the grave. You have to atend to that, feel it, act under its weight but also strain toward the brightness of the glory of that very physical restatement of the person on the last day, the resurrection of the holy body with the soul shadow awakened from sleep in the heart of God. Burning trivilaises, sanitises all of this. It is a great sadness to me. Abortion is the holocaust of the living. Cremation is the holocaust of the dead.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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HenryT
Canadian Anglican
# 3722
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
... Cremation is the holocaust of the dead.
So what's your take on the violence of modern embalming?
Rendering the body toxic seems as bad as burning it, to me.
[ 22. August 2006, 22:55: Message edited by: Henry Troup ]
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"Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned" P. Henry, 1788
Posts: 7231 | From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Dec 2002
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
We discourage embalming as well. We reverently wash the body and bury it promptly.
There has been a lot of talk here about toxicity here but the boot is on the other foot, really. Remember when you see the smoke rise from that cleverly disguised chimney all the dioxins that are dispersed into the environment. Radioactivity in pacemakers is not the only issue. Anyway, this is a digression. My point was the physical.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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KenWritez
Shipmate
# 3238
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Posted
When I die and am cremated, I want someone to fling a handful of my ashes onto Fr. Gregory. I'll put aside some money in my will to pay for this.
[ 22. August 2006, 23:29: Message edited by: KenWritez ]
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"The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd." --Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction
My blog: http://oxygenofgrace.blogspot.com
Posts: 11102 | From: Left coast of Wonderland, by the rabbit hole | Registered: Aug 2002
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Banner Lady
Ship's Ensign
# 10505
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Posted
Interesting thread for me. My Catholic husband, a keen gardener, wants to be buried. In a cardboard box in his garden where he will return naturally to the earth. Unfortunately, the law prohibits this, and he will not get his wishes. He is appalled at the thought of having bits taken from his body even for good purposes, and equally appalled at the thought of un-natural preserving. I would like to be cremated - it is just neater after the organ donations. My sense of connection with the universe is not threatened in any way by this. "Ashes to ashes" seems just as appropriate as "dust to dust" and I recall reading about a cemetary on the coast somewhere that suffered erosion and bodies tumbled into the sea before the graves were hastily bulldozed into a retaining wall. Distressing for many.
I don't expect to be remembered much after a generation or too - but I will live on (leave a legacy) in the gene pool of my family. And I certainly pray for a faith that will last a thousand generations. It seems to me that this is where the body connects with spirit and soul. This is what is important for me - not how my temporal remains are disposed, although I would prefer whatever is done is done respectfully. If I pre-decease my husband, he will have great difficulty agreeing to a cremation, or allowing any part of my body to be donated. So be it. He will do what comforts him, and I will not be there to protest. But I fully expect God to know me whatever happens to the earthly remains, just as I expect to recognize in the cloud of witnesses those burned for their faith, or immolated or dismembered accidentally or deliberately, etc, etc. Fr Gregory, I find it difficult to assent to the idea that burial is within the will and purpose of God for us and cremation cannot be.
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Women in the church are not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be enjoyed.
Posts: 7080 | From: Canberra Australia | Registered: Oct 2005
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TubaMirum
Shipmate
# 8282
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
quote:
Originally posted by Hooker's Trick:
Cremation: If it was good enough for Caesar, it's good enough for me.
It was good enough for Brunnhilde....
Ross
I knew there was another good reason I was forgetting to mention....
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posts: 4719 | From: Right Coast USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Banner Lady:
"Ashes to ashes" seems just as appropriate as "dust to dust"
Exactly. Fr Gregory's post is poetic, but I think what he's talking about is symbolism that has been attached after the fact to certain cultural practices, not symbolism that is naturally and necessarily tied to Christian doctrine.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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jlg
What is this place?
Why am I here?
# 98
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
I wouldn't mind people seeing what a real dead body looked like, but I don't want them smitten with a decaying body. I think. Unless a real unmadeup dead body really does look too unnerving.)
When my mother died, she was in New Mexico at my younger sister's house. Since we knew she wanted to be buried next to our Dad in Michigan, her body was embalmed (required for a body flying across state lines). On the day of the burial (no funeral) we kids trooped to the funeral home in the morning to wrap her in a shroud and put her in the coffin. So we all handled her naked body and spent some of time looking at her face and talking a bit about how it was her and yet it was sort of bland and so relaxed that it didn't have any personality anymore.
As far as I'm concerned, the whole make-up thing is totally unnecessary. Dead people look dead. It's not the coloring, it's the muscle slackness and well, obviously, the lack of "life".
Younger sister also took some photos of Mom immediately after she died. (Yeah, yeah, my family's weird.) They're a bit macabre, but nothing horrifying.
My Dad died in a commercial plane crash. The undertaker talked my brother out of letting us actually see the body (I'm still annoyed about that), but he did have us come in, helped us all feel the facial bones through the body bag and gave us time alone with the body-bag-in-a-casket. My mother wasn't up to it at the time, but at the gravesite (family only), just before the coffin was to be lowered into the grave, she suddenly wanted to. So the casket was opened there and then, the undertaker helped her feel the face and allowed her what time she wanted to say goodbye.
In my family, at least, dead bodies aren't unnerving. But then, we were the ones getting glared at in the airport "morgue" for laughing, and we are all pretty much "throw my body on the compost-heap"-saying people. And not Christians, either, so what would we know about death.
Posts: 17391 | From: Just a Town, New Hampshire, USA | Registered: May 2001
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Scot
Deck hand
# 2095
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Posted
I think I've found the problem - a tradition of premodern science.
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Jews and Christians, however, at least until the modern age insist on the holiness of matter
This is going to come as a shock to some, but matter is not destroyed by combustion. Sure, some small amount of matter is lost as various forms of energy, but a similar conversion process happens during organic decay. Most of that precious matter is still around post-cremation in the form of carbon dioxide, ash, bone fragments, or water vapor.
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“Here, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” - Thomas Jefferson
Posts: 9515 | From: Southern California | Registered: Jan 2002
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
Quite. I have always found it fairly silly that some people think God wouldn't be able to resurrect them if they were cremated.
I can understand why people think burial is more respectful than creamation, but at the end of the day whether my body rots away or is burned away makes not one jot of difference to anything.
Sorry, Father Gregory, but I am firmly with No. 2. I don't care either way. It's not at all important.
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Infinite Penguins.
My "Readit, Swapit" page
My "LibraryThing" page
Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
In fact, "I won't be there" in relation to one's own death, is a fascinatingly evasive statement. If you don't believe that life is anything but a physical process, then you will indeed be there - but you'll be dead. So "I won't be there" is denial in a literal, not just a psychological, sense. If you do believe that life is a phenomenon that transcends corporeal existence, then it's likely that you hold that belief in a religious framework. And as Father G points out, religious framworks have always, until very recently, prescribed precisely what should happen to a dead body. To hold a religious framework is to want what that framework demands to happen to your body after death.
On the other hand, if you adhere to a religious framework which allows you a choice, as has become possible with modernity, then abdication of choice is also an abdication of the responsibility of using the freedom that that tradition entrusts you with regarding the treatment of your body after death. And that implies, surely, that it's something you don't want to look at or think about. Which to my mind pretty much fits the bill for "death-phobic".
I believe that when we die, we are dead and that is the end of the matter. Our last line has been written. There is no afterlife. No Heaven. No Hell. No purgatory. No reincarnation. Nothing.
However, I also believe that death is part of the natural cycle. From dust we are raised and to dust we return. We are here for a season and then we are no more. Death is natural. Death-phobia, it seems to me, is more to do with the rather unfortunate influence of Hellenistic philosophy upon Christianity than much else. The old pagans did not fear death.
However, I do wish to quibble with you when you say it is inconsistant to hold that there is no God and no afterlife and to say "I won't be there so I don't care". You seem to think that "I" could only refer to either A) one's body or B) one's alleged immortal soul.
But why can't there a C? C - mind, human consciousness that does not survive physical death. "Papio" is clearly not just a hunk of meat, although he is that too. But it is quite a leap in the dark to assume that therefore "Papio" must be an immortal soul. I see no strong evidence that "Papio" is an immortal soul but only supposition and guesswork.
I am quite happy to think at, and look at, my own death. In fact, I consider it impossible to lead a fully human, dignified life without fully and frankly facing the fact that one day I will be dead. So will you. So will everyone. That said, although I have a slight preference for burial, I really don't think it makes a heck of a lot of difference and I certainly can't see why it has such a deep spiritual dimension for some of you.
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Infinite Penguins.
My "Readit, Swapit" page
My "LibraryThing" page
Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
...Have you heard these comments before?
(1) The body is only a temporary house for the soul. The body is only the envelope, the shell, the packaging.
(2) When I'm dead I won't care so toss me out with the garbage.
(3) I don't want to be cooped up ... I want to be free, spread on the wind. ...
This strikes me as a net full of red herrings, and an attempt to force the discussion to stay on your chosen track.
quote:
...Abortion is the holocaust of the living. Cremation is the holocaust of the dead.
And this strikes me as trivializing abortion. We all return to dust, whether quickly or slowly, in flames or through putrefaction. Deal with it. God does.
quote:
Originally posted by jlg:
... My Dad died in a commercial plane crash. The undertaker talked my brother out of letting us actually see the body (I'm still annoyed about that)...
Ummm....my suggestion on that would be "Don't be annoyed." My brother's nephew recently died in Iraq, when the Humvee in which he was riding (having volunteered to take another man's place) went over a bomb set under the pavement, and was, essentially, vaporized.
The Army sent a sealed coffin back to Alaska for the funeral. Shane's father, however, wanted to put a Bible into the coffin. The sergeant who accompanied the body tried to talk him out of it, but the father insisted. Accompanied by his brother and father, he opened the coffin -- and they were all utterly sickened. (I should mention that the father is a professional guide, accustomed to field-dressing large mammals, and the brother and father both served in combat.) Sometimes we really ARE better off remembering people as they were in life.
Ross
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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Laura
General nuisance
# 10
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Scot:
I think I've found the problem - a tradition of premodern science.
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Jews and Christians, however, at least until the modern age insist on the holiness of matter
This is going to come as a shock to some, but matter is not destroyed by combustion. Sure, some small amount of matter is lost as various forms of energy, but a similar conversion process happens during organic decay. Most of that precious matter is still around post-cremation in the form of carbon dioxide, ash, bone fragments, or water vapor.
Just wanted to point out that that's what I was inelegantly trying to get at with my assertion that "matter is neither created nor destroyed". That no matter what you do to it, it's still there until God does whatever He plans to do with it on the last day.
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm
Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
This is absolutely fascinating. F
r.G (taking him as representative of the Orthodoxen) is - I hope I don't misrepresent him - categorically opposed to the practice of cremation on the grounds that it is fundamentally in conflict with the understanding of the meaning of human embodied existecne his tradition of Christianity represents.
I - and I don't misrepresent me - have no overwhelming objection to cremation but a clear personal preference for burial; I belong to a Christian tradition that has no problems with cremation and is neutral on the matter. My significant personal reservations about cremation are more psychological and sociological - but yes, if I had a say in the matter, they would feed into a marginal theoogical preference in my church for burial over cremation. I think that there are significant social pressures to conform to an urban norm, and to utilitarian attitudes to the disposal of bodies, which aren't, at the deepest level, what a lot of people really feel.
The pressures to cremate are, it seems to me, very much the pressures towayrds finding some way of continuing a fundamentally unsustainable Western lifestile, and ecological issues be buggered. Before some smartass deliberately misconstrues me, I'm not saying that cremation is another possible cause of global ecological catastrophe: I'm not even arguing that cremation is more ecologically damaging than burial. In fact, my argument is stronger if it's not - though it's not actually an argument about ecology. What I'm saying is that arguments that we're running out of land, that cremation is more efficient, cleaner, etc. etc. are a place where "quasi-ecological" arguments are allowed to register in ways they don't elsewhere. Cremation is representable as a modern, industrialized form of dealing with an aspect of human life - viz. death - which is actually better than the old, traditional ways and therefore should be used instead of them. Society isn't neutral as between cremation and burial. And as Scot points out – with the mysterious confidence of one who thinks that it’s enough to brand something as non-scientific in some quarters for it to be dismissed - it is often presented as a matter of scientific vs. pre-scientific views of matter. But it's really to do with scientific vs. other-than-purely-scientific views of human existence.
This is the point at which I have to state - yet again - that I have absolutely no problems with people who have a principled, or even a genuinely emotional, preference for cremation. My point is that the enormous social pressures in favour of the normalization of cremation are deeply linked to social pressures for the sanitization of the whole business of dying, and in favour of conforming our whole human existence to the demands of consumer capitalism. Even people whose deep personal preference is for burial find themselves carried along by the instrumental-rational logic of this. Because our society and culture isn’t about a tiny degree of extravagance in our expression of grief; it’s about colossal extravagance in conspicuous consumption and built-in obsolescence (now there’s a concept you could apply to modern views of death!) and the play of desire through advertising. Everything is commodified, including death. You get your twenty prettified minutes, and that’s it. After death comes closure.
The problem on this thread is that so many people are arguing “But I personally want cremation, and it’s not for any of these reasons.” Sure. I accept that. I respect it. What I’m saying is – it isn’t about any one of us. It’s about our culture.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Banner Lady:
"Ashes to ashes" seems just as appropriate as "dust to dust"
Exactly. Fr Gregory's post is poetic, but I think what he's talking about is symbolism that has been attached after the fact to certain cultural practices, not symbolism that is naturally and necessarily tied to Christian doctrine.
I agree - and Fr G, your comments on "the holocaust of the dead" just show how ludicrous you are becoming. In your respect for the dead you are in danger of losing all respect for the living.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Cremation is the holocaust of the dead.
One can imagine rows of solemn Orthodoxen carrying placards, encamped outside crematoria.
Perhaps a website with a counter dial on it, clicking up the numbers of dead subjected to the holocaust as we speak.
There is, perhaps, yet time to galvanize the world against the holocaust that is in our midst.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
As for Christ's own example... well, I'm sure you can guess the obvious objections to that argument.
Well, the phoenix--which rises from its own ashes--is used as a symbol of Christ... ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I personally want to be cremated (ideally, in an outdoor funeral pyre) and have my ashes scattered at sea. The decay factor of death freaks me out. Cremation gets around that. If I'm going to have symbolism, I'd rather have myself set free in the ocean than be left to molder in a box in the ground.
And I think God can cope with cremation just fine. She has to deal with people who die in fires, after all.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Autenrieth Road: quote:
And since I haven't picked out a preferred final resting place for me (in particular, my church's memorial garden or not? and do my siblings have a preference?), at the moment I don't care whether I'm buried or cremated, nor, if I were cremated, what is done with my ashes. I think really the best thing to do is give my body to medical research, but so far that is the one thought I find unnerving. Even though I won't be there while I'm being dissected, having morgue-humor jokes made necessary to the survival of doctors-in-training, etc.
( deconstruct that last sentence, Psyduck. Actually seriously, I'd be curious what your view is on that set of uses of "I", even if I'm not always convinced.)
Sorry - missed that one. OK - well, for starters, it's clearly not saying "I won't be there, so I don't care what they do with me". As to the pronoun - well, where am "I"? As of yesterday, I'm on a list to do a course in Perth in September. I'm also a telepresence (in the way Kenneth Gergen seems to use the word) in front of you as you read this - and when we converse about it we do so in "cyberspace", so I'm there too. Wherever that is. Who am I? Well - there you go! Who am I to whom? In a sense, the "skin-bound" self that is one referent of "I" is really just a part of something vastly more complex. And as Lacan points out, if I point into a mirror and say "There I am!", I'm actually indexing an illusory "self" that's been foisted on me since the day my mother held me up to another mirror and said "That's you, baby!" And that mirror image is what "I" think people think of "me". Small wonder that we lose our purchase on embodied selfhood! The body itself becomes a surface, then a text, as we write our identity messages on it in tattoos and piercings and changing fashions. And then we scrunch it up and throw it on the fire...
Psyduck; producing poetry from postmodern crap since 1999...
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Gill H
Shipmate
# 68
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Posted
Isn't it amazing how much our own experience colours our view? For example, I don't think of cremations as impersonal or ugly at all, because the two crems I know best are beautiful buildings, full of light. One has a lovely stained glass window which you walk past on your way in, and when the light hits it, you are walking through pools of colour. Inside there are pews and a small chapel organ. The vicar usually robes. The services have been conducted with a mixture of simplicity, dignity and warmth. And in one of the crems, the (closed) coffin is not removed until afterwards, so you can walk past and 'say your goodbyes'. Far from the cold, impersonal, production-line experience which some have described.
My grandparents' ashes are buried together in the churchyard, and my mum puts fresh flowers on them every few weeks. Most visits to that church are concluded with a short look at the grave. I don't feel that cremation has altered the way I can do that.
Incidentally, at my grandad's service at the crem, the organist played 'To Be A Pilgrim'. No-one had requested this, and the organist didn't know him: but it was the perfect hymn to sum up my grandad's life of quiet, deep faith and untiring service to others. Of all the funerals I've attended (and I've played the organ for many), that is one of the most beautiful I remember.
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*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.
- Lyda Rose
Posts: 9313 | From: London | Registered: May 2001
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