Ashes to Ashes, Grass-cuttings to Grass-cuttings?

I don't want to be composted, just so you know. That may seem like one of the weirder comments I have offered, at least in the past two or three days, but there is actually discussion these days of composting deceased humans as an alternative to traditional forms of burial.

Did you notice I said forms, as in more than one? We used to think of bodily burial, usually in a coffin or a shroud as traditional. It's still what we see in virtually every movie and TV show when people are gathered in a cemetery. But more than half of the funerals and memorials I do are of those who have been cremated, and that has been the case for a couple of decades now. Bodily burial requires a fair amount of space in a cemetery, embalming fluid is made up of icky chemicals, and concrete vaults in the ground aren't exactly eco-friendly. We figured that cremation was better in virtually every way, but the truth is that it takes a lot of energy to incinerate a human body. That may sound unpleasant but it is a reality.

Enter composting as the new alternative. I will let Katrina Spade describe this to you.Katrina is the designer, architect, executive director, and sole employee of the Urban Death Project (no, I'm not making this up, we're still weeks away from April 1st)

“Bodies, our bodies,” Spade says, “will be laid into the ground and covered with wood chips. There would also be some other carbon materials that would help the process work a little more efficiently, like sawdust, which is very high-carbon, and possibly something like alfalfa straw.” The process of turning from human to soil is surprisingly quick. The UDP’s website says that within a few weeks of interment, “the body decomposes and turns into a nutrient-rich compost. The process is continuous — new bodies are laid into the system as finished compost is extracted below.”
There is precedent for this kind of burial, and it comes from agriculture. “Thank goodness,” Spade says. “I really don’t think I’m the appropriate person to create a brand new process but I do think that I’m the right person to take a process that’s been studied by agriculture and universities for a number of years now. The research is out there.”

 
My Lee Valley tumbler composter isn't nearly big enough to fit my 6'4" frame, so I won't be tucked in with the salad leftovers unless we invite Freddy Krueger to the service. Seriously, while I am inclined toward "never say never" I really don't think that I will come around on this one. But I appreciate that there are people who are challenging our conventions. Humans need ritual and meaning in burial and have done so for millennia. But it has taken many different forms. In Jesus' day there was bodily burial, in a tomb if you were well off. We know from the gospels that Jesus was buried in a "loaner" tomb because he was poor. It would have been assumed that after the flesh decayed Jesus' bones would be gathered and put into an ossuary, a bone box, usually made of stone. That was "traditional."

What do you think about alternatives to the alternatives? Maybe not composting (although you might surprise me) but some other option?