tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post1242707619251029369..comments2023-05-21T05:56:57.842+01:00Comments on mindfulness and mortality: Funerals: form and essence, convention and truthgloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-86991749569104673132010-11-12T09:47:44.578+00:002010-11-12T09:47:44.578+00:00Goodbye covers it, doesn't it XP? The only psy...Goodbye covers it, doesn't it XP? The only psychological danger seems to me avoiding "goodbye." The rest is open to cultural/spiritual negotiation and development.gloriamundihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-40323179706739776502010-11-10T11:01:57.874+00:002010-11-10T11:01:57.874+00:00Great post, as ever, Gloria.
The line which struc...Great post, as ever, Gloria.<br /><br />The line which struck a particular chord with me, was "would the mourners recognise it as a funeral? Would this matter?".<br /><br />I think this is a key point in what we do. We may be doing an "alternative" ceremony, or ignoring many of the conventions of a ceremony, but I would worry if lots of people came out of one of my ceremonies feeling as though they hadn't said goodbye, at least in some way. <br /><br />Interesting stuff. CheersX. Piryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17484665119103422982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-14922323762839661732010-10-21T08:36:40.065+01:002010-10-21T08:36:40.065+01:00Jester's shoes and bells it shall be, Arkers, ...Jester's shoes and bells it shall be, Arkers, thanks for this interesting thought. Maybe some families have tribal traditions (e.g. military families)but maybe others have much less sense of trad and continuity if they, or some of them, have moved away from an established religion. I guess you can invent, or develop, a new ritual, but you can't, of course, invent a new tradition. Time does that. After all, "traditional" jazz was the new hot sound in 1923.<br /><br />Maybe one trad is evolving - the natural-world-worshipping, vaguely pantheistic pagan sort of "hippy" funeral. I posted about a full-on version thereof recently, but little elements of it creep in to otherwise conventional funerals - e.g. the growing popularity of poems that say a version of "she's not gone, she's all around us in the sunset and the..." fill in whichever bit of the natural world you particularly respond to. <br /><br />People seem to find this comforting, though whether they feel it only in a metaphorical sense (i.e. we'll think of her when...) or in a literal sense (i.e. her spirit is literally all around us*) is less clear.<br /><br />*Perhaps easier to feel on the seashore than on the Northern line in the rush-hour, of course...gloriamundihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-35651388967816561712010-10-20T12:10:11.799+01:002010-10-20T12:10:11.799+01:00I think families have their own "tribal"...I think families have their own "tribal" traditions. It seems to me that in funerals one wants to have one's own tribal traditions accepted and acknowledged. <br /><br />Sometimes these will fit with society's traditions and sometimes they don't.<br /><br />I suppose you don't want to impose society on a tribe, nor a tribe on society.<br /><br />I think I would opt for jestor's shoes complete with bells.arkayeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09863542411248361164noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-49818517353527574452010-10-18T17:27:10.658+01:002010-10-18T17:27:10.658+01:00Thanks Charles. As well-balanced as ever (or are y...Thanks Charles. As well-balanced as ever (or are you devoted to excess and take that as an insult..?)Interesting about Malcolm McL. <br /><br />I wonder if it's possible to avoid entirely thinking of one's own funeral in terms of what one would like to see - when ,er, one won't, that's for sure. As opposed to whatever would suit the nearest and dearest - which might be quite different. "I'd like X but partner would hate it" might be quite a tricky one. <br /><br />I've thought about that in terms of leaving the old corpus to science - I think some I know dearly well wouldn't like that at all, and I certainly wouldn't feel strongly enough about it to hurt them. Maybe if the desire for a principled action comes from a strong enough centre, it carries the day over the wishes of the next-of. And anyway, my example isn't about funerals themselves.<br /><br />Bare feet on the catafalque is a ritual element too far for me, though who knows? Perhaps duvets and bare feet will become de rigeur mortis (sorry..) over the next few cash-strapped cut-up years.gloriamundihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-45660014914700590092010-10-18T16:35:26.800+01:002010-10-18T16:35:26.800+01:00Celebrants have to meet people where they are and ...Celebrants have to meet people where they are and take them where they want to go. Brits, however iconoclastic, like to incorporate a trapping or two from the past -- we just don't do clean breaks over here. Good thing, bad thing? I really couldn't value-judge. You'd have thought that Malcolm Mclaren would definitely have reinvented the funeral when he planned his own. Yet it was remarkably mainstream - a horse-drawn hearse, three big black lims, some eyebrow-raising music... <br /><br />It can be a mistake to regard conventions as constraints. After all, Alexander Pope made a good career out of heroic couplets. <br /><br />But we remember too that churches have evolved liturgies because they do the job very well, according to belief, though they bash out the same stuff every time. It's not that nobody minds that, it's that they positively want it. <br /><br />No need to get too hung up on all this, I think. Funerals are bound to be funereal. <br /><br />Having said which, Carl Marlow told me of a funeral he did for a man who told him to take him to the crem wrapped in his duvet. Carl said it didn't look good, him on the catafalque with his feet sticking out. That may not have been recognisable as a funeral (though the venue might have been a giveaway).Charles Cowlinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757185376546920527noreply@blogger.com