mindfulness in a funeral

It is, I would guess, ill-advised to enter a mindfulness meditation when one is ministering at a funeral...but mindfulness is not, I think, entirely about meditation practice itself. It is also about understanding, feeling, in a particular way about - well, you know, time, life, death, mortality, the present, and so on...

At some point during a funeral ceremony, I usually find myself up front on my own looking at a coffin, whether it is by a graveside and people are arranging themselves whilst the undertaker does a bit of business with ropes and bearers, or at a crem whilst people are still filing in. I could look elsewhere, but that would look odd, and I don't want to.

If I get it right, it's a moment of strong focus on NOW. There's usually some tension underneath it. (will Sam in the control room fade the music as requested? or - if it rains and blows as hard as it did on the way here, will anyone hear anything and how soon can I get them back under cover without indecent haste? or - I didn't know X was going to say anything, I hope we don't overshoot, it's a busy morning at Slime Green Crematorium - you get the picture)But that focus, a hard look at the coffin for a minute or two, can cause all that to drop away. "What if" evaporates, "should I have..." dissolves, "when should I..." disintegrates, and I'm left with a powerful feeling of the present moment in a sort of super-reality. Hard to explain. Daresay other celebrinisters have similar experiences.

So it's not a meditation. I think it comes from a changed view of the importance of the right here right now, the need not to worry about anything else - and it's a real help, I'm grateful for it.