A 'Death Cafe' for all its macabre title is simply a forum for people to meet and discuss death and bereavement over a cuppa.
They are sometimes called 'Bereavement Cafes'. One of the local churches here has held them from time to time.
I've not been to any of the sessions although I was tempted to when feeling the loss of my wife very keenly.
I think Death Café vs Bereavement Café usage varies because for some they are more about talking about planning your own funeral/will etc and making it less taboo to talk about your wishes around death - many people attend who have never been bereaved.
I think in general it's good to remember that it's not only older people who experience bereavement - there's often not that much aimed at teenagers and young adults, as the relatively few resources for children seem to be more aimed at younger children losing eg a grandparent. Younger people also generally die more sudden/unexpected deaths, which can add another type of difficulty to the bereavement - not that bereavement after a long illness is less painful, but not being able to prepare puts you on the back foot from the start (this can also be especially painful if you hadn't been able to right any wrongs between you before the person died). I think talking about death and bereavement in an open way is really important in church in general, but that means not forgetting to talk about it with young people specifically as well as the wider adult congregation.
Seasons for Growth was the resource our local school turned to when a parent of some of the pupils died. I wouldn't like to comment on how useful it was as I wasn't directly involved.
Thank you, @Gamma Gamaliel. That’s interesting. It’s not at all unusual for churches in these parts to have classes, sessions, workshops or whatever on planning for your own death or grief or related topics. But I’ve never heard of anything in a café-type setting.
It’s also common for churches around here to offer to keep funeral-related instructions on file for members.
I am curious to know how joined-up bereavement discussion is with pregnancy loss/infant loss discussion, especially in a church context - I haven't been part of a congregation where there was pregnancy or infant loss that was made publicly known while I was there, so I don't have any experience of my own.
In my experience, it very much depends on what the parents want. Some want the support of the church, while others prefer to keep it private.
Re shared molecules and so forth--I would think nursing mothers in any time would be apt to realize that this happens with every human being and therefore can't be a problem for God in any sensible theological system. Granted, those who came up with some of the more far out stuff were almost certainly never nursing mothers.
Which excludes the Gospel writers and our Lord himself of course ... 😉
But a point well made.
I did hear a Greek priest on a Radio 4 programme about the space problems in Greek cemeteries say that unless you are buried you won't be resurrected, which I thought was pretty 'out there'.
But then plenty of people would say that the idea of a bodily resurrection in the first place is pretty outrageous.
However we cut it, I think those of us who do believe in 'a sure and certain hope of resurrection,' don't reduce it to some form of resuscitation. Christ's resurrected body seems to have been able to do things our mortal bodies can't.
Whatever our views, I think we have to live with a degree of leeway on this and many other matters.
They assert that
"One is not free to dispose of the body as if it were trash or fertilizer. The body that is buried belongs to the person who will one day be resurrected and will once again enjoy possession of it.
"
Atoms that are incorporated in proteins in humans spend on average several years as part of that human before being excreted or exhaled. The human body is a ship of Theseus.
@Gamma Gamaliel you will know a lot more about this than I do. Am I right, though, that the practice of digging people up after so many years to see whether they have rotted correctly, and if so, with respectful celebration, boxing their bones and storing them in charnel houses is a specifically Greek tradition that is no more a tradition in Slavic Orthodoxy than it ever has been here?
Anyone who has encountered any case law in English ecclesiastical courts will have picked up that there is a very strong presumption that once a body or ashes have been buried, there they stay until the Day of Judgement.
One humour of our dead body produces worms, and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour, and then all dies, and all dries, and moulders into dust, and that dust is blown into the river, and that puddled water tumbled into the sea, and that ebbs and flows in infinite revolutions, and still, still God knows in what cabinet every seed-pearl lies, in what part of the world every grain of every man's dust lies
…
he beckons for the bodies of his saints, and in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements, is sat down at the right hand of God, in a glorious resurrection.
There's a question that Donne does not address. What happens to these dispersed grains of dust? The short answer is that they get recycled. Some of them find their way back into the food that we eat. Each one of us is fearfully and wonderfully assembled from particles from the past. Across the billions of people now alive, it seems more than likely that a few of these particles were once incorporated into the bodies of others when they died, and that some will still be incorporated in our bodies when, in turn, we die. Come the bodily resurrection, to whose body will those traces that have been shared between more than one body, down the dusty river of time, belong?
I have really enjoyed reading those Donne quotes, and your comment is thought provoking. The thought it is provoking in me most immediately is allied to Jesus, the Sadducees and the woman with seven husbands - 'whose wife will then she be?'. I wonder if Jesus' response in that context is useful to the one we are discussing here.
In what sense, @mark_in_manchester? That our resurrection bodies won't have the requisite reproductive bits and pieces?
Is marriage all about physical union?
The passage about the seven husbands has Jesus saying that we will be 'like the angels in heaven.'
How do we understand that? Incorporeal spirits? Bodies, Jim, but not as we know them?
Meanwhile, and as an aside, @Nick Tamen, I don't know about your side of the Pond but here the term 'café' or 'café style' seems to be applied these days to anything informal that involves chairs, a table and cups of tea or coffee.
It's one of those usages that mildly irritates me, curmudgeon that I am.
@Gamma Gamaliel you will know a lot more about this than I do. Am I right, though, that the practice of digging people up after so many years to see whether they have rotted correctly, and if so, with respectful celebration, boxing their bones and storing them in charnel houses is a specifically Greek tradition that is no more a tradition in Slavic Orthodoxy than it ever has been here?
Anyone who has encountered any case law in English ecclesiastical courts will have picked up that there is a very strong presumption that once a body or ashes have been buried, there they stay until the Day of Judgement.
I don't know what they do in Slavic countries but cremation other than under special circumstances is generally avoided in Orthodoxy as a whole. That doesn't mean that cremation is illegal in all Orthodox-majority countries.
I understand that some Greeks who wish to cremate their departed loved ones arrange to go to Bulgaria where cremation is legal - and Bulgaria is a majority-Orthodox country.
I'm not aware whether or not people go in for ossuaries in the Greek fashion anywhere other than Greece. My impression is that it's only become an issue there because they are running out of burial space in Athens, Thessalonika and other urban centres. I have no idea what they do in rural Greece on on the Greek Islands.
I might be wrong but I'm guessing that if space wasn't an issue they would leave the bones under the ground and not exhume them at all.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I am can enlighten us?
Meanwhile, and as an aside, @Nick Tamen, I don't know about your side of the Pond but here the term 'café' or 'café style' seems to be applied these days to anything informal that involves chairs, a table and cups of tea or coffee.
Ah, thanks. That provides helpful context. Where I am, café is more or less a synonym for coffee shop, perhaps with the connotation of being a little nicer, so I was picturing something happening in a business establishment.
…
I have really enjoyed reading those Donne quotes, and your comment is thought provoking. The thought it is provoking in me most immediately is allied to Jesus, the Sadducees and the woman with seven husbands - 'whose wife will then she be?'. I wonder if Jesus' response in that context is useful to the one we are discussing here.
It would seem to relate to our physicality, at least.
In what sense, mark_in_manchester? That our resurrection bodies won't have the requisite reproductive bits and pieces?
Is marriage all about physical union?
The passage about the seven husbands has Jesus saying that we will be 'like the angels in heaven.'
How do we understand that? Incorporeal spirits? Bodies, Jim, but not as we know them?
Well - there won't be any reproduction after the resurrection. Human procreation is the creation of new human beings, and there won't be any.
The Second Coming signals the end of the worldly cycle of human birth, life and death; the earthly recycling of at least some of our component elements. It is the end of history, and the beginning of non-history. C S Lewis' take at the end of The Last Battle is intriguing in this regard.
Meanwhile, and as an aside, Nick Tamen, I don't know about your side of the Pond but here the term 'café' or 'café style' seems to be applied these days to anything informal that involves chairs, a table and cups of tea or coffee.
Ah, thanks. That provides helpful context. Where I am, café is more or less a synonym for coffee shop, perhaps with the connotation of being a little nicer, so I was picturing something happening in a business establishment.
My observation is that an important consideration for any hosted café-style event is whether there'll be cake.
Meanwhile, and as an aside, @Nick Tamen, I don't know about your side of the Pond but here the term 'café' or 'café style' seems to be applied these days to anything informal that involves chairs, a table and cups of tea or coffee.
Ah, thanks. That provides helpful context. Where I am, café is more or less a synonym for coffee shop, perhaps with the connotation of being a little nicer, so I was picturing something happening in a business establishment.
Café is usually a little bit less nice than a Coffee Shop in the UK. Anything down to a Greasy Spoon "Caff" - you know the sort of thing, tables protected by a quarter inch layer of grease after they've been wiped down, "If you don't take sugar, don't stir it!"
Meanwhile, and as an aside, @Nick Tamen, I don't know about your side of the Pond but here the term 'café' or 'café style' seems to be applied these days to anything informal that involves chairs, a table and cups of tea or coffee.
Ah, thanks. That provides helpful context. Where I am, café is more or less a synonym for coffee shop, perhaps with the connotation of being a little nicer, so I was picturing something happening in a business establishment.
Café is usually a little bit less nice than a Coffee Shop in the UK. Anything down to a Greasy Spoon "Caff" - you know the sort of thing, tables protected by a quarter inch layer of grease after they've been wiped down, "If you don't take sugar, don't stir it!"
I think it varies - I would say that a "caff" is quite distinct from a café. I think of a coffee shop as a café specialising in coffee specifically, whereas a café is typically more focused on food. There are certainly more upmarket cafés, especially ones focused on specific cuisines eg Turkish food or breakfast food. Around me there are a lot of posh brunch-focused cafés for instance. I wouldn't think of them as coffee shops because they focus on food rather than coffee (though they do serve coffee).
The other day I was at the wake/viewing (yes it was open casket) that I mentioned above. There was a brief "vigil ceremony" conducted by a RC deacon (a friend of the family) and there was a funeral at the church the next day (I didn't go to that) followed by the burial.
(I think I meant, by referring to Jesus and the Sadducees, that he implies that their concerns about the 'nuts and bolts' (apparent) corollaries of a set of beliefs - in that case and in this one here in this thread involving the jump between this life and the next - can be somewhat beside the point. That doesn't always stop me worrying about the nuts and bolts, unfortunately, but it can be at least a little reassuring).
It never struck me before, and it probably should have done - but nobody ever considered which of the seven brothers the woman might prefer (or she might have preferred none of them, and gone off on her own!)
Considering that they were hypothetical husbands the Sadducees had thought up simply to make a theological point to endorse their particular position, it really doesn't get us very far imagining what the woman or any of her imaginary seven husbands might think.
But don't let that stop your imagination running into over-drive.
The putative marriages may have been 'arranged' ones, not that this has much bearing on the point the Sadducees were trying to make either.
They were simply concerned as to whether or not there was to be a resurrection. The issue of female rights or agency wouldn't have been uppermost in their minds.
It's not absolutely clear to me that there couldn't be new human beings after the Parousia. I guess it seems unlikely, but then I would have considered it unlikely that eating would be something that glorified bodies would do, and yet Jesus did eat fish after his resurrection.
I find it interesting that Paul says that "faith, hope and love" are all eternal. That suggests to me that there will still be things in the new heavens and earth that we won't get "all at once" so that the exercise of faith and hope will still be meaningful. I think that would chime well with the end of The Last Battle as well!
It never struck me before, and it probably should have done - but nobody ever considered which of the seven brothers the woman might prefer (or she might have preferred none of them, and gone off on her own!)
I think their question was based on taking ideas like that of Genesis 'one flesh' for a permanent bond, and then questioning how such an apparent problem would be resolved if there was an after life. Agency less so.
Or rather, they didn't believe in marriage as permanent after death because to them there WAS no after death, at least for humans--and they thought this example would be the most ridiculous, as obviously silly.
Just a gentle reminder that this isnt Hell or Purgatory and to avoid making personal remarks to other posters which might come off as insulting or dismissive eg. about imaginations running into overdrive
It's not absolutely clear to me that there couldn't be new human beings after the Parousia. I guess it seems unlikely, but then I would have considered it unlikely that eating would be something that glorified bodies would do, and yet Jesus did eat fish after his resurrection.
I find it interesting that Paul says that "faith, hope and love" are all eternal. That suggests to me that there will still be things in the new heavens and earth that we won't get "all at once" so that the exercise of faith and hope will still be meaningful. I think that would chime well with the end of The Last Battle as well!
The premise of the Sadducees' question was about marriage and, as far as the listeners were concerned, the purpose of marriage was procreation. (Preference wouldn't have come into it.) As biblehub puts it:
So he left his wife to his brother.
This refers to the practice of levirate marriage, as outlined in Deuteronomy 25:5-6. According to this law, if a man died without having children, his brother was to marry the widow to produce offspring in the deceased brother's name. This practice was intended to ensure the continuation of the family line and to provide for the widow. The Sadducees use this law to challenge Jesus on the concept of resurrection, which they did not believe in, by presenting a scenario they thought would expose the absurdity of resurrection.
In relation to viewing this as a duty or a privilege, Maimonides later wrote that "anyone who adds a soul to the Jewish people is considered as if he has built an entire world."
Thinking about eating and drinking and marriage brings to mind the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. As biblehub puts it:
This marriage supper symbolizes the joyous reunion of Christ and His people. The term “supper” here is widely understood to be more than symbolic; it denotes a real celebration. Many interpret this to affirm that in heaven (or in the new creation), the redeemed will partake in a feast with the Lord.
In this marriage, between Christ and his bride, the Church, the new human beings are the redeemed, all those who attend the feast. They are already a new creation. The act of creation of new human beings has already happened. Putting it another way, I find the idea there might be new human beings created following this particular wedding banquet like saying there will be two different kinds of new human beings in heaven, which I find hard to reconcile, given that the earthly reproductive idea of marriage will have passed away.
Comments
I think Death Café vs Bereavement Café usage varies because for some they are more about talking about planning your own funeral/will etc and making it less taboo to talk about your wishes around death - many people attend who have never been bereaved.
Seasons for Growth was the resource our local school turned to when a parent of some of the pupils died. I wouldn't like to comment on how useful it was as I wasn't directly involved.
It’s also common for churches around here to offer to keep funeral-related instructions on file for members.
In my experience, it very much depends on what the parents want. Some want the support of the church, while others prefer to keep it private.
But a point well made.
I did hear a Greek priest on a Radio 4 programme about the space problems in Greek cemeteries say that unless you are buried you won't be resurrected, which I thought was pretty 'out there'.
But then plenty of people would say that the idea of a bodily resurrection in the first place is pretty outrageous.
However we cut it, I think those of us who do believe in 'a sure and certain hope of resurrection,' don't reduce it to some form of resuscitation. Christ's resurrected body seems to have been able to do things our mortal bodies can't.
Whatever our views, I think we have to live with a degree of leeway on this and many other matters.
Atoms that are incorporated in proteins in humans spend on average several years as part of that human before being excreted or exhaled. The human body is a ship of Theseus.
Anyone who has encountered any case law in English ecclesiastical courts will have picked up that there is a very strong presumption that once a body or ashes have been buried, there they stay until the Day of Judgement.
I have really enjoyed reading those Donne quotes, and your comment is thought provoking. The thought it is provoking in me most immediately is allied to Jesus, the Sadducees and the woman with seven husbands - 'whose wife will then she be?'. I wonder if Jesus' response in that context is useful to the one we are discussing here.
Is marriage all about physical union?
The passage about the seven husbands has Jesus saying that we will be 'like the angels in heaven.'
How do we understand that? Incorporeal spirits? Bodies, Jim, but not as we know them?
Meanwhile, and as an aside, @Nick Tamen, I don't know about your side of the Pond but here the term 'café' or 'café style' seems to be applied these days to anything informal that involves chairs, a table and cups of tea or coffee.
It's one of those usages that mildly irritates me, curmudgeon that I am.
I don't know what they do in Slavic countries but cremation other than under special circumstances is generally avoided in Orthodoxy as a whole. That doesn't mean that cremation is illegal in all Orthodox-majority countries.
I understand that some Greeks who wish to cremate their departed loved ones arrange to go to Bulgaria where cremation is legal - and Bulgaria is a majority-Orthodox country.
I'm not aware whether or not people go in for ossuaries in the Greek fashion anywhere other than Greece. My impression is that it's only become an issue there because they are running out of burial space in Athens, Thessalonika and other urban centres. I have no idea what they do in rural Greece on on the Greek Islands.
I might be wrong but I'm guessing that if space wasn't an issue they would leave the bones under the ground and not exhume them at all.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I am can enlighten us?
Well - there won't be any reproduction after the resurrection. Human procreation is the creation of new human beings, and there won't be any.
The Second Coming signals the end of the worldly cycle of human birth, life and death; the earthly recycling of at least some of our component elements. It is the end of history, and the beginning of non-history. C S Lewis' take at the end of The Last Battle is intriguing in this regard.
And cake? My observation is that an important consideration for any hosted café-style event is whether there'll be cake.
My questions about the post-resurrection body's reproductive bits were rhetorical of course.
The key issue is whether after the general resurrection there will be cake.
Café is usually a little bit less nice than a Coffee Shop in the UK. Anything down to a Greasy Spoon "Caff" - you know the sort of thing, tables protected by a quarter inch layer of grease after they've been wiped down, "If you don't take sugar, don't stir it!"
I think it varies - I would say that a "caff" is quite distinct from a café. I think of a coffee shop as a café specialising in coffee specifically, whereas a café is typically more focused on food. There are certainly more upmarket cafés, especially ones focused on specific cuisines eg Turkish food or breakfast food. Around me there are a lot of posh brunch-focused cafés for instance. I wouldn't think of them as coffee shops because they focus on food rather than coffee (though they do serve coffee).
But don't let that stop your imagination running into over-drive.
The putative marriages may have been 'arranged' ones, not that this has much bearing on the point the Sadducees were trying to make either.
They were simply concerned as to whether or not there was to be a resurrection. The issue of female rights or agency wouldn't have been uppermost in their minds.
I find it interesting that Paul says that "faith, hope and love" are all eternal. That suggests to me that there will still be things in the new heavens and earth that we won't get "all at once" so that the exercise of faith and hope will still be meaningful. I think that would chime well with the end of The Last Battle as well!
I think their question was based on taking ideas like that of Genesis 'one flesh' for a permanent bond, and then questioning how such an apparent problem would be resolved if there was an after life. Agency less so.
Cheers
L
Epiphanies Host
Thinking about eating and drinking and marriage brings to mind the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. As biblehub puts it: In this marriage, between Christ and his bride, the Church, the new human beings are the redeemed, all those who attend the feast. They are already a new creation. The act of creation of new human beings has already happened. Putting it another way, I find the idea there might be new human beings created following this particular wedding banquet like saying there will be two different kinds of new human beings in heaven, which I find hard to reconcile, given that the earthly reproductive idea of marriage will have passed away.