an 1872 painting by Frank Holl
"in life, in death,
in life beyond death,
God is with us. We are not alone.
Thanks be to God."
From a New Creed United Church of Canada
In a few weeks I'll head to Maryland to take part in the memorial service for my Aunt Jo, one of three beautiful sisters, including my late mother. Joyce, or Jo as we knew her, got most the humour genes in her family. She was quick-witted, welcoming, a great story-teller. She contracted COVID early on and was hospitalized so we thought she was a goner. Instad she recovered sufficiently to return to her long-term care residence, dying not long after her 92nd birthday.
The service will happen 16 months after her death because of the pandemic and travel restrictions but her immediate family feels that it is important to honour her memory collectively. I certainly support this, and I've agreed to preside. it will be interesting to negotiate what the gather will entail given that even though my cousins are great people, only a handful are "churchy." I'm confident that we'll work it out together
There was a thoughtful article in the Globe and Mail newspaper on the weekend with the title How We say goodbye to the dead: Mourning is as old, and perhaps older, than humanity -- but whether the rituals are ancient or modern, their audience is the same: Us, the living. Ya, that's a mouthful, but it really sums up the thesis of the piece and why we do what we do when loved ones die, even if we aren't particularly religious or have any convictions about an afterlife. The author Ed O'Loughlin observes:
Some religions hold, or at least suggest, that certain forms of burial, and associated prayers and rituals, are necessary for the deceased to attain an afterlife, or prosper therein. From this derives the almost universal human practice, going back tens of thousands of years, of leaving artifacts, tools, food or weapons in the graves of loved ones. From this, the various cultural taboos for and/or against interfering with corpses by mutilation, mummification, embalming, burning, disembowelment, exposure, ossification or cannibalism. From this, the scattering of ashes, the first handful of earth in an open grave.
How far back does this go? The great religions of the historic period – meaning, in practice, the period in which some people started writing things down – are mostly based on scripture, but these scriptures usually make little mention of many of the grave rites practised by their faithful – the pinch of earth, the placing of stones, the sprinkling of magic water. Some were probably already in use when the scriptures were written.
New Creed Booklet illustration Gary Crawford
I have been saddened to see the photos and film of mass graves in Ukraine, situations where the murderous attacks by the Russian military have resulted in so many bodies of innocent people that they have to buried without benefit of individual dignity nor the gathering of those who mourn their deaths. It is a sin that this has to happen.
Even though clergy may quip about being in the "hatch, match, and dispatch" business, most of us consider it a sacred duty and honour to bury the dead. I never took this responsibility lightly and while I always tried to respect the wishes of families I took the opportunity to affirm our resurrection hope.
Mass grave in Ukraine
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