dust to dust
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in Purgatory
What are your thoughts on this phrase?
Mine are:
* Grief is a real and disabling condition.
* Loss can help with remembering the important things, but it is a blunt instrument
* I'm not too bothered if my body feeds plants or fish after I'm dead.
Mine are:
* Grief is a real and disabling condition.
* Loss can help with remembering the important things, but it is a blunt instrument
* I'm not too bothered if my body feeds plants or fish after I'm dead.
Comments
I've seen a man killed by it. It took forty years for him to die.
In the same way that poking your eyes with a fork can help with remembering how nice it is not to have a fork in your eye.
Me neither.
If it is decided to bury me, please don't come and try to speak to me. I do not want to be lying in the cold and dark waiting for someone to speak.
dust to dust, as in the genius of Genesis 3:19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.
And Joni Mitchell, we are star dust, we are golden.
I find it sublime, yearningly magnificently poignant. That infinite nature does this. Makes eyes and hearts and minds to fleetingly perceive beauty, glory. In dust.
* Grief is a subjective and enabling condition.
* Life gains loss.
* You won't be bothered then and ever more. So why be bothered now?
Must be kind while the dust stirs.
Rather; stardust, golden, billion your old carbon, humanity as the pinnacle of creation, children of the universe, if only we can escape from 'The Fall' (the devil's bargain) from which we get 'original sin'. If the first few chapters of Genesis are as mythological as I now think they are then 'fallen human nature' is also a myth?
I'd say it's a fair assessment of what we are like, but it's not a description of why we're like we are.
Actually, it seems to me that it's a bit Catch 22. If it's our fallen nature that makes us do things like take apples we shouldn't then Adam and Eve wouldn't have done it until they'd already fallen... It also strikes me that if heaven is a place where our original sinless nature is restored, what's to stop us doing it again?
Perhaps the message of Genesis 3 is that we are in fact inherently motivated towards selfishness and willfulness - if we weren't we'd probably never have survived - but we can't use that as an excuse when it leads us down dark and destructive paths.
But I digress.
My reason? I hate the idea of being dug up in 1000 years time and someone pouring over my bones and speculating on my life.
So cremation it is, then I would like my ashes to be thrown out to sea at the lighthouse where we scattered Mum and Dad’s ashes.
So fish food it is. Do fish eat ashes?
Most scriptural... For me natural Jesus, with all good will, is remarkably encouraging.
Whatever's left over is to be cremated, and the ashes scattered on the River - in answer to @Boogie's question, I think burnt human ashes are quite heavy, so will probably not be eaten by fishes...
@Telford (going back quite a few posts), grief can be disabling - not physically, perhaps, but certainly mentally and spiritually. It can also be enabling, as @Martin54 says.
(I lecture in death, dying and bereavement so always enjoy reading others people’s thoughts on the subject.)
It ties in with our theology about the body and about matter in general.
We buried my late wife and my mother in law. It's raw and visceral but I'm glad we did so. I overruled my mother's wishes for cremation and arranged a 'natural burial' in a significant spot, a burial ground overlooking our valley back home in South Wales and in sight of the school where she taught.
In Greece where they are running out of burial space they dig up the bones and put them in ossuaries.
I know all the arguments for and against and whilst I wouldn't sit in judgement on anyone who thinks or acts differently, this is an area where I'm more than happy - as well as obliged - to follow Tradition.
All together now in Topol voice: 'Tradition ...'
I attended a Jewish friend's funeral and natural burial. We were invited to take a spade and shovel soil into the grave. His mother shovelled the first spadeful. She explained to me that as burying a loved one is the hardest thing you can do the physical effort symbolises and enacts the cost.
I found it very humbling, visceral and cathartic.
Physical folks! Matter matters to paraphrase St John of Damascus.
So, no, I have no issue with 'dust to dust' in the Anglican funeral service.
Grief and loss?
We have to bear them as best we can.
Is time a healer? No.
Some people can live with grief and loss and manage it.
Others can't. It destroys them.
I hope I'm one of those who can manage it. Lord have mercy!
Job 14:7-9 For there is hope of a tree. If it be cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, And the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, And bring forth boughs like a plant.
I would love to taste its fruit.
Indeed.
"How long will you grieve?
How long will they be dead?" (David Kessler)
I've left instructions that I want to be buried as cremation seems to me to be such a violent thing to do to a body that has served me well for however long it does serve me. Also, Mr Nen has kept his father's ashes in our loft for almost 20 years and I wouldn't want him doing that with mine. If I'm to be buried it won't be a problem.
Badly run down parts are also useful - not for recycling of course, but as a teaching aid. Not just the good ones of course: "See students, this is the liver of a man who stuck pretty well to the advice to limit your drinking to 2 glasses a day, this is the liver of a man who went well beyond that".
I know I'll be there again - he paced it out so he could go in the 'same spot'. I'm not sure what Mum would be making of that. Next time I'll be camping for a few nights, but I don't intend to wee in the cave.
My Dad wanted to leave his body to science, until we discovered that if they were full up we'd have to make other arrangements. I did alert him to the fact that my sister would not be best pleased if he were not buried with Mum, so we went that route. I went with him to the Directors to organise a pre-paid and we just paid in top for what we wanted.
As for me, natural burial is now an option, so I've told the family that's for me. If I am lucky to have time, I'll organise a suitcase of things and label it so they know that's what it's for.
I constantly wonder at how we are made up of the stuff of the universe and as a non physics person, it's as good as magic to me and fills me with awe.
I don't buy into the whole pain is the price we pay for love thing. I just wanted to be as good as I could to my parents, even though they were trying in their latter years. I remember them with great love and appreciation, but on a day to day basis, I don't miss them. Perhaps I think my duty is discharged and I'm happy to leave them at rest and enjoy my happy memories. I know for others, it is quite different and I may seem hard hearted.
I don't know if it's connected to my son's illness, but getting to live to an old age with relatively little suffering seems a luxury to me. When he was about 8 and one of his closer hospital friends died, I still remember him saying, If I die Mum, can I be cremated and stay at home with you and Dad? My answer? We can do that. I'd always imagined that he would be interred with us.
I do hope to be part of the heavenly throng, but if I'm just pfft like a blown out candle, well I won't really know about it!
Bishop Dean K. Johnson. I want this on the handout at my memorial service.
She said to me afterwards that she wished Jack was still around, he would have enjoyed that story.
Graven Image, thank you for that quote.
That's really nice
The ashes of both my parents are still in boxes after quite a few years. My brother would now like to do something with them (which I agree with) but apparently is considering a double urn burial at the crematorium, which is expensive and which I think is completely unnecessary. I’d rather the ashes were scattered somewhere - either at a place they enjoyed visiting or just in the communal garden at the crematorium.
Just to mention some ideas - I was glad my Dad chose burial of ashes on a beach below the tide line (my Mum had picked the general location, but not the details). No-one will dig her up, only a small hole was required, and I think it would have felt rather odd to pour the ashes over a field (say) and then walk off and leave them there - though I am sure others have good experiences to relate of doing just that. I would have considered pouring her ashes into the sea off the rocks down there if tides had been different and Dad had been in agreement. And at church we have buried ashes of longstanding members in the grounds, which felt OK too.
We wound up putting my father's ashes at Kern River in the Sierras. It took my sibs about ten years to come to that resolution, but they were okay with it by that point. The river was special to him, so the fact that it didn't cost a lot was beside the point.
Bless you for sharing this. Because my imminent and quite risky heart ops , Mrs RR and I are having conversations about funerals and cremations etc ....
Apparently, being turned into cat food (my favoured choice) is not an option.
But as you lovingly imply, Jesus has it all in hand ....
At this late date they are likely to be unscatterable. I have heard many stories of urns of human cremains solidifying -- becoming basically concrete.
Mum was only in the cardboard box for 6 months, but had this turned out to be the case I think I might have found a friend who didn't know her, and handed them the box, a sturdy sack and a lump hammer, and asked them not to tell me too much post-hoc detail
@ChastMastr - thanks for your good wishes.
My brother has provisionally agreed to scattering our parents’ ashes in the memorial garden at the crematorium, but obviously if either or both of them have solidified, we shall have to rethink this.
Apparently he was unsure about scattering ashes after hearing in a sermon that this was unBiblical as it signified a curse, but he’s since spoken to his own minister who advised him this was no longer something to worry about.
It's terrible how random bits of garbage get out there and stress people out.