Being a funeral celebrant

I've posted on this before - a good while ago - and this one is likely to be just as opinionated as the earlier ones. But it's only my opinion, so just step over it rather than let it spoil your morning, or even two minutes of it!

Being a funeral celebrant is:

• a community service not a job. You may get some money for it, but if you are not primarily committed to being at the service of your community, then clear off out of it, because you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. (The problem is expensive funerals unsuited to the families who book them.)

• being part of a movement. Not the movement you might think it is. It's not the Atheists Militant (or otherwise), nor the New Age, nor the Green Funeral Movement, or any other pre-committed label. It's a movement working to find ways of "doing" funerals that suit the families you work with and their cultures.

• not being anti or pro the status quo. There isn't a status quo. It's all on the move.

• demanding and draining, though not depressing.

• really rather wonderful

We come in all shapes and sizes, and we work in all sorts of places.

If you think it suits you, come and join us, but if you just want to earn as much as you can as quickly as you can - please don't.

Is Big Ju-Ju Tabu for Unordained Celebrants?

Interesting discussion recently with some colleagues about"juju." No disrespect to people's beliefs intended - I first heard the word from an Anglican priest. He meant, of course, the power and authority wielded, for believers, by ordained ministers of faith.

Some of us unordained ones will happily lead a prayer and sing a hymn, but most of us without one of these:

will stop short of a full-blown blessing or prayer in the deity's name, i.e. "In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I..."etc. That's big ju-ju. That's for the Cloth. Isn't it?

And yet some of us, without getting too spooky, do report a feeling of authority, a special responsibility and resonance, which comes from speaking about the Big Things of Life and Death, whether or not we are in an area of discourse referring to religious belief (such as a hymn or a prayer). 

We have, perhaps, at some moments and if we are any good, a degree of hieratic function - that stops short, of course, of the power a priest has amongst those who believe in her faith. 

But if we can't summon up at least a degree of authority - which comes only from doing the job well - then are we any good? 

And how are we to work any ju-ju at all amongst people who have no religious belief, even if they will open their mouths just a little bit to sort of sing TLMS, if we can't find a semi- (?pseudo?) hieratic function?

This is nothing to do, BTW, with taking control away from the family and Doing Your Big-Shot Own Thing. (The sort of role assumption, happily less common than it was, that caused a lot of people to choose an Unordained Celebrant rather than a priest.)

Let me sum up: I think a funeral needs to be a transformative ceremony, even if it isn't, or is only in a small way, a religious ritual. To make it such, something special, apart, powerful, needs to happen, when possible. This may or may not involve words from a religious tradition, or indeed a new faith such as Paganism.

How far into religious form and usage should an unordained celebrant go? 
1) No ju-ju
2) Little ju-ju
3) Big ju-ju, provided the celebrant is authentic in her role at that moment

And: can any of us create juju without any religious form and usage?

Or is it futile to try - is Ju-ju Tabu, unless you are

Or:

Or:

Dammit, I can't work my pictorial way round all the world's faith systems, I'm sure you get my point, so this is the last one:

 

There may be no simple answer, but despite my flippant manner, ha ha, I think it's a pretty important area, because it raises yet again the question: what is a funeral for, and how does it do its work? If we haven't thought about juju, I submit the idea to you, in all arrogance, that we don't really know how "do" a funeral, or what it is for.

What is a Funeral For?

Any crematorium worker/chapel attendant will tell you that there are all sorts of funerals these days, all shades of belief and unbelief and not-sureness, all manner of ritual and ceremony, all sorts of behaviour from respectful quiet through laughing and chattering to fist fights.

And we all know that a body has to go somewhere, when a life has left it....

Funerals:
                What         

                        Are

                        They

                         Actually

                FOR? 

(I mean, what use are they? They are bloody expensive!)

In human societies around the world, people need rites by which to say goodbye to a life and to part company with the body that was that life. In our culture, there has never been so much choice available as to how we do this.

Because I'm a funeral celebrant, it seems right to keep asking myself such questions. What difference does a funeral ceremony make? What else are we doing, other than putting a body somewhere it can, er, "rejoin the natural elements from which we all come." I'm going to risk a few over-simplified and blunt suggestions in answer to the question.

1. It marks a stage in our grieving. I've learned to distrust all generalisations about grief, except that each of us does it in her own way, each of us goes through it. A funeral can and should help  people along this journey.

2. It brings people together who have one thing in common, even if nothing else: the life that has recently ended. Mutual support.

3. It's public, usually, to some degree at least, so the gathering marks it as a death that has happened, a life that is emphasised and remembered, a spirit that is freed - perhaps.

4a). Aha! Now we're getting to it. Spirits. Religion/not religion appears. But it's a greatly exaggerated non-problem, if a funeral really does its job. You may believe that the funeral is to mark the release of a soul from a body, to help the soul on its journey to an after-life, in which case it really needs to be done, or else. (see "Antigone.")

4b). Or you don't believe a word of it, or you are a perhapsist. No problem, as people irritatingly say at every turn these days. But really, it shouldn't be a problem. If a funeral clarifies and illuminates the meaning of someone's life, if it makes plain the way we carry away with us the influence of the dead person, the bit of us that came from our shared lives, then that too emphasises what doesn't stay in the box when we leave. The soul doesn't stay in the box, nor does the meaning and effect of someone's life. (For better and/or for worse, that goes on rippling.....) Either or both these things are true.

5. A funeral is a big and difficult transition. You've seen John Doe's life in terms of his body, walking, talking, doing stuff with you, stuff that even at a distance, makes a difference to you. Then this impossible thing happens: the body is no longer doing the stuff that you called John Doe. But it still is John, the beloved, the old bastard, the laughalot, the champ, the.... Oh. No, it's not. John's in heaven, or in my memory, or in the way I laugh or talk too much when I'm nervous, or can bowl a leg-spinner. He's still with me, but he's not. And in that box, there's that body that was John - but it's just a thing, now. No, not "just." You need a chance to make that huge adjustment, so that John, in whatever way you like or don't like, stays with you, and "the body of John Doe we now commit to..." etc. You can walk away from the body and hold on to the meaning, to you, of the life

6. This change hurts, takes time, needs to be gone through, in whatever way your culture supports, in wherever these things are done. With a stiff upper lip, in a cacophony of wailing and howling from the professional mourners in some countries, in the awful silence that follows a battle, in secret, in St Paul's Cathedral. I was told the story of the mother in front of her daughter's open casket who, when the undertaker tried to console her that "it" wasn't really her daughter, slapped him till his teeth rattled and said "I'll decide when I stop calling this my daughter." The mother was still in transition, from a living daughter to a body and a set of meanings she could, somehow, manage to live with."She" wasn't "it," not yet. 

7. A person becomes a body not when the pulse stops, but when those who love her are ready to see the difference between a body and what they still have, what they can live on with. Disrupt that, with your breezy 20 minutes in a crematorium gliding over the surface of things, disrupt that, and you make it harder for them to find what they can live on with. Get it badly wrong, and you may make it harder for them, for the rest of their lives. That's why a funeral ceremony matters, that's why we have to get it as right as possible. There's a lot more to grieving than a funeral, of course, but a funeral is a pivot. That's why we feel better when it's over.

8. A funeral ceremony is to express love. If it doesn't, it's like a gin and tonic with no gin,  no lemon, no ice and f*all tonic either. It may be to express the love of God, it is certainly to show the love we have for each other, behind the stiff upper lip, behind the rain that's pissing down on the pagan ritual, behind the jazz band or the syrupy ballad or the lovely choir, behind the nervous giggles afterwards, underneath the undertaker's funny little top hat, the bishop's bonnet, Aunty Elsie's frankly dreadful hat. 

"Now abideth faith, hope, charity; these three. And the greatest of these is charity."

Charity in the ancient meaning of "unselfish and unconditional love for people" (my translation, not copyright...) 

A funeral needs to be a charity-filled transition, to help everyone there to grieve, so they can leave a body behind and take away with them the meaning of a life.

Funerals and beliefs: choice of celebrants, polarised views

This is long, and a bit specialised, but I want to cover a few points about celebrancy and then leave the issue alone.

As a chronic non-joiner, there's plenty of things I don't like too much about the BHA celebrants' arrangements, and I am BHA accredited. We sometimes talk as though it's us against the rest of the world. But it's not "BHA or the vicars," there are other choices!

On the other hand, there are many good things about the network. One thing it suffers from, perhaps as a result of the above, is a crude, polarising sort of caricature, and I want to point out two examples.

It grieves me to criticise Green Fuse, an excellent organisation; or rather, to criticise someone they quote in their information. From their leaflet about training celebrants:

"the humanist model, resting on a single celebrant with minimal input from others, will increasingly be felt too controlled and directive," wrote (apparently) John Pearce, in "Pharos," the Cremation Society magazine, as quoted by Green Fuse.

I'm afraid that's a gross misrepresentation of a complex and varied situation. I take ceremonies in which I say everything that gets said, because that's what the family has requested; I take other ceremonies in which I say very little. I think other BHA celebrants would agree. I have taken ones in the middle ground, where I've worked with two or three family members who gave the tribute - hardly "minimal input." I don't think that's just me, I know that other BHA people would say the same.

So let me be plainer: what you write is untrue, Mr Pearce. There isn't one, compulsory humanist model. And there is often plenty of input - from other speakers but also including music: as well the CD player and an organist, a brass band, several pipers, solo singers, and a string quartet. And we have people handing out daffodils round the audience, we have pictures, a bottle of (sadly, unopened!) wine, candles...sometimes. If that's what the people want.

"If secular celebrants are to keep up with the demand for more participative funerals they will have to abandon their "lead speaker" model in favour of one closer to that of producer in a theatre."

Now that I agree with, provided it is what the family want. People with strong views about funerals (other than me, of course...) tend to forget that their vision of what a funeral should be may not coincide with what this family, in front of me today, actually want. My job is to help them realise what they might be able to do, by discussing, listening, suggesting. And finally, doing what they want.

I thin Green Fuse should take that statement out of their leaflet. They are too good to need knocking copy. There isn't a humanist model. There's a traditional "shape" to a secular crematorium ceremony, what Charles at GFG calls "religion sans," and many families fall back on that. They are used to it, they've seen it before, it helps them. Other families abandon it completely, or modify it considerably.

The real choice is between 1) what some BHA people rather snottily sometimes call "mix and match." That's a non- Christian ceremony, but with elements that come from the view that there is a life after death - a hymn, or a prayer, or some other religious ritual element. And 2) ceremonies which do not feature any religious ritual. That may be the real choice. (Apart from a completely religious funeral witrh a priest/minister/rabbi etc, of course.)

But look at this, from the Institute of Civil Funerals:

"Humanist Funeral: A funeral taken by an officiant of the British Humanist Association. Such funerals are entirely secular and will not include hymns or prayers, nor any spiritual reference, and there will be no reference to an ‘after-life’."

Are all humanist celebrants members of the BHA celebrants' network? Of course not. First bit of nonsense.

Clever of them to use the term "officiant," which suggests to me someone officious, dry, bureaucratic etc. Few people use the term these days - as IoCF will know! Me, groovy celebrant; you, fusty old officiant!

BHA celebrants argue and think over the matter of hymns quite a lot, because people like singing, and hymns are often powerfully nostalgic, even for non-believers. Some BHA-ers are very uneasy about this area, and would do all they could to avoid a hymn, maybe by suggesting the family talks to the vicar after all, or at least making it plain in the ceremony that this hymn has nothing to do with them... Let's call them the "contagionists," those who think a hymn is the thin end of a sanctified wedge aimed at the purity of their atheism!

Many of us are less anxious, and have the occasional hymn, right at the end of the ceremony, usually. On a few occasions, in a funeral I've helped with, a family member has said a prayer, also towards the end. It's usually because of a sharp difference in the beliefs of different family members. I always ask such families if they are sure they don't want a Christian ceremony, with a vicar or minister. If they are sure they don't, I'll do what I can to give them what they want, provided it doesn't put me in a position in which I feel inauthentic.

"nor any spiritual reference..." the IoCF goes on. Nonsense. Many of us will have quoted words by religious leaders, philosophers or writers that have a spiritual reference. The Dalai Lama on compassion, the Book of Ecclesiastes, etc.

"And there will be no mention of an after-life." More nonsense. No mention by me, perhaps, but many a time a family speaker will refer to the dead person being in "another place," or wondering "where Bill is now," and all those other wondering and puzzled statements bereaved people quite naturally come out with. Of course, I leap up with a referee's whistle and try to silence them...."Stop all this nonsense, there's to be no mention of an after-life in humanist ceremonies," I say, "or you will disrupt the IoCF's comfortable categories."

Judging from content, I'd say the purely atheist ceremonies I've taken would come out as a clear minority. Many people are (Charles again) "probabilists," or "possibilists." BHA celebrants may not always share this supernatural uncertainty, but we work with and support families who think thus.

There is one salient difference between BHA people and other secular, civil, non-Church celebrants: they do make what they believe (e.g. "only one life") a defining factor in whether they take a funeral on or not. But that doesn't seem to me a matter for criticism by other celebrants, or for feelings of superiority by BHA people. One is entitled to follow one's beliefs. I wouldn't expect a vicar not to mention God, I wouldn't expect a member of the BHA to read you the Creed.

However, personally, I don't think BHA celebrants should explain, however briefly, what "humanism" is. I agree with those who say that it is a kind of preaching, or publicising of a view - unless of course the dead person was a self-declared humanist, or perhaps even a member of the BHA. But we're not there to preach anything or convert anyone. Yet many in the BHA celebrants network expect us to do so. Many others of us (straw poll at a conference group a couple of years ago) do not, and will not. See? We vary.

I think maybe we cause resentment and attract criticism perhaps because 1) there's a lot of us; 2) BHA were the first organised set-up in secular celebrancy, as far as I know; 3) no doubt some of us are not very good - some vicars are not very good; perhaps some IoCFs are...etc

It takes, as granny used to say, all sorts to make a world. All that really matters is: that the funeral is what the family wants, and that it's a good funeral. We need a variety of GOOD celebrants on offer - that's all that matters. Trying to increase your "market share" (yuk!) by crudifying what your "competitors" (more yuk!) do, is unnecessary. It creates the wrong sort of context. BHA shouldn't do it, IoCF shouldn't do it, Green Fuse shouldn't do it. Amen.

Because the real point is that all three organisations train celebrants properly! Vive la difference, not yah boo down with you!

Funeral celebrants - why do we do it? part 2 - £££?

I should say that I'm chiefly thinking about celebrinisters who share my lack of belief in an established religion and broadly speaking don't think there's a soul, a non-physical individual entity, nor do they believe in an afterlife, above or below stairs.

Celebrinisters who follow an established faith system presumably believe they are helping with a sacred rite that commends a soul to its God and offers the consolation of their faith to those who share it. At least, I hope they believe so, or else what's going on? But then, faith/not faith/new faith/bitsa faith, it's a rich but puzzling environment, and in many situations, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto. I'm told by a Quaker that "Quaker Humanism" is one of their growth points. But, er, humanists, according to the BHA website, don't believe in an afterlife or a God, so...h'm. All interesting and fun, too. (Good people, Quakers, I find.) But I digress. As usual. Sorry.

So why do we do it? when we have no faith conviction and no faith community office or title such as vicar, priest, elder, rabbi, imam etc. that would make it a matter of religious vocation and function?

Let's try to get the money thing out of the way - not settled, just out of the way.

There are those of us who do it because they can, and because they rely on the income, to varying extents. If they were BHA-trained, they were told, quite plainly and before they started out on the expensive training, that you can't earn a living at it even if you work flat out, the equivalent of full-time. Some of us still grumble if they feel they are not getting enough ceremonies (to generate the cash they need, though they don't always admit that) and yes Charles, it is this that can lead to fruitless and irrelevant tensions about "my" territories and "my" FDs.

In my case, a little extra hard-earned cash is welcome, but I'm lucky - it's far from essential to the running of Gloria Mansions. I could earn between 3 and 4 times as much per hour/day doing what I used to do, as a part-time consultant, so I'd be pretty stupid to do it for the money. I guess several of us who are in retirement could say the same; it's only a guess, but I think quite a lot of us were or are what's sometimes called "professional people."

This really isn't to exhibit my smugness, at least, that's not my intention! but just to make the point - plenty of us don't do it because we "have" to, financially. Some do have to, it seems, and my fear is that it may distort their practice. Sorry if that sounds patronising. Maybe they've more stamina than me - I really can't do more than two good (?effective?honest?) funerals in a week. It is tiring and draining, and on the few occasions I have done three, I've been furthered knackered by worrying more than usual that I'm going to make a mistake. If I didn't find it demanding, I'd know it was time to stop. You can't predict or control the rate, of course, but one a week with a few weeks away from it to re-charge, would suit me well.

There's nothing wrong with being paid. Religious celebrinisters are paid, often but not always, less than us. (I'm not getting any further into that one, thanks.) It is a service we are seeking to provide, and at least paying for it means if a family thinks we messed it up, they can complain. If it was a charitiable, free-of-charge thing, wouldn't people feel more inhibited from complaining if someone gets it wrong? That's how it seems to me.

And we all have the option of donating our fee to charity, or declining payment for a special case of some kind. I know that happens sometimes.

Conclusion: Some of us may well be doing it principally for the money. Maybe that pressure will grow if hard times are ahead. I very much doubt that money is the only reason for doing it, even for those of us who need to do it to pay basic bills.

So enough already with the stuff about the dosh, eh?

Thanks for sticking with an important but mostly quite boring area of discussion, next time, more psychologically interesting areas, I hope.

Funeral celebrants - why do we do it? part 1

Taking up Charles' comment on my last post - yes, sure is a canful. (Charles is talking about a canful of worms, i.e. rivalries between celebsters/minibrants cf rivalries between undertakers, and dodgy business practices to get custom.) He has berated "us" before for sucking up to undertakers.

Well, you have to go and see them, talk about what you do, let them see what sort of strange bird you are. After all, they wouldn't want to use you if they'd never met you and knew nothing about you, would they? (Though surprisingly often they have done just that.) So that seems fair enough. Beyond that, I'm not sure what kind of sucking up I could do if I tried, but maybe I lack imagination... One experienced trainer recommended to us that we visit local FDs each Christmas with a card and a tin of biscuits. What? Why? Surely they've enough integrity not to use me just because I give them a bsicuit selection from Liddel? (OK, even M&S) That's about 28 tins of biscuits (and cards), around here, and a lot of carbon miles too. No chance. So I ignored that advice. Doesn't seem to have damaged my work too badly. 75cl of something warming to the blokes at the local crems who work so hard and deal with people so well in such a crappy (in one case) environment, that's a different matter.

I could, of course, turn down a request for a funeral from an FD of whom I disapproved (the reverse of sucking up , I guess...) but what would happen then? Nothing untoward, provided the FD went to a celebster who was as good or better than me - and before you ask, yes, I'm sure there are very many! But not so many round here, we're thin on the ground, however we're badged. And I would do slightly fewer funerals.

Now here's an odd thing - we - at least, those of us I've met - actually want to do this stuff, find it rewarding (in other than a financial sense) and provided we are not overworking want to keep doing it. In an odd way, despite the tensions, the sadnesses and the problems, we seem to like doing it. We probably worry a bit if suddenly we aren't being contacted, even though we know perfectly well that there is probably no particular reason for it. Maybe it's not too self-righteous to say that we think our work helps people, but I think there's more to it than that.

Which brings me to the real can of worms, which is is maybe and ultimately about why we do this odd thing. I'm trying not to write excessively long posts, so I'll have a think on this topic and drone on about it next time.