Burial rites
Jan. 19th, 2007 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
None of that Glenn-Danzig-Fucking in the journal today (even if it did get more discussion than anything I've posted in months...what does that say about us?). Today's journal is serious business. (Insofar as anything is.)
See, yesterday, we performed a funeral for a young man (he had achieved the ripe old age of 23) who was shot while trying to defend his mother and younger brother from a man who had broken into their home. We didn't know him, or his family, but he was a Wiccan, and Gaia Community was the last religious group he'd had any affiliation with, so they called us. And of course, we thought it was the right thing to do, to go and honor this person who was a fellow-traveler, even if we didn't know him, and talk to his family, who were supportive of his religious leanings, but not really solid on what the whole Wicca thing was about. And so we did.
And funerals, as they say, are for the living, so we tried to do the thing in such a way that the family could see that his beliefs were honored and also in such a way that they could get what was happening, and hopefully derive some comfort from it as regards the afterlife of their loved one.
The thing is, like other popular religions derived from several historical and philosophical systems, Wicca has two conflicting views of the afterlife (yes, I'm talking to you, Christianity, with your immortal soul transmuted to the afterlife [Greek!] and your bodily resurrection at the coming of Christ [Hebrew!]. Don't look so embarrassed though, you're still a very popular religion, and most of your adherents don't even get that there's a distinction). Some of the thinking favors reincarnation, some favors an afterworld populated by the shades of the ancestors. And of course, some people opt for both versions, an afterworld which is a between-place, where at any given time, some ancestors reside while waiting to be reincarnated. And we have no idea which of these views the poor deceased gentleman held. So some of the theology may have got a bit muddled as we tried to include something of a range.
And of course, many of us are hovering in a similar state: many of us either adhere to a religion that makes conflicting statements about the afterlife, or draw our religious beliefs from a variety of sources, so that unless we are clear about these things while we are alive, after we die, those who will prepare our burial or cremation rites will have to make their best guess, and proceed from there.
So I'm thinking that when I'm writing my advance directives, I'm going to have to include a brief description of what will and will not be appropriate at my funeral rites. The gods know that in my particular case, you're unlikely to be able to distill that from observation of the rituals and workings I attend.
See, yesterday, we performed a funeral for a young man (he had achieved the ripe old age of 23) who was shot while trying to defend his mother and younger brother from a man who had broken into their home. We didn't know him, or his family, but he was a Wiccan, and Gaia Community was the last religious group he'd had any affiliation with, so they called us. And of course, we thought it was the right thing to do, to go and honor this person who was a fellow-traveler, even if we didn't know him, and talk to his family, who were supportive of his religious leanings, but not really solid on what the whole Wicca thing was about. And so we did.
And funerals, as they say, are for the living, so we tried to do the thing in such a way that the family could see that his beliefs were honored and also in such a way that they could get what was happening, and hopefully derive some comfort from it as regards the afterlife of their loved one.
The thing is, like other popular religions derived from several historical and philosophical systems, Wicca has two conflicting views of the afterlife (yes, I'm talking to you, Christianity, with your immortal soul transmuted to the afterlife [Greek!] and your bodily resurrection at the coming of Christ [Hebrew!]. Don't look so embarrassed though, you're still a very popular religion, and most of your adherents don't even get that there's a distinction). Some of the thinking favors reincarnation, some favors an afterworld populated by the shades of the ancestors. And of course, some people opt for both versions, an afterworld which is a between-place, where at any given time, some ancestors reside while waiting to be reincarnated. And we have no idea which of these views the poor deceased gentleman held. So some of the theology may have got a bit muddled as we tried to include something of a range.
And of course, many of us are hovering in a similar state: many of us either adhere to a religion that makes conflicting statements about the afterlife, or draw our religious beliefs from a variety of sources, so that unless we are clear about these things while we are alive, after we die, those who will prepare our burial or cremation rites will have to make their best guess, and proceed from there.
So I'm thinking that when I'm writing my advance directives, I'm going to have to include a brief description of what will and will not be appropriate at my funeral rites. The gods know that in my particular case, you're unlikely to be able to distill that from observation of the rituals and workings I attend.