9/16/2019 – One Year Later It was one year ago this evening that I received an unexpected call from Life Alert saying that my mother
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Category: Funerals/Burial
A Virtual Vigil and Wake in the Time of the Coronavirus
A Virtual Vigil It was a Monday morning when I received the news that a dear friend of mine had become “unresponsive.” She had battled
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Ought we to consider readopting the catafalque?
At the moment many of us are at the survival setting and we just want to get through another day. However, whatever the resolution of
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Life is Changed, Not Ended
What we celebrate liturgically speaks to our actual lived experience
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On Living with a “Green” Memento Mori
How do we confront our own finitude?
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iParadisum
I am fascinated by the music lists that my liturgical music pals come up with for their own funerals…Most of these same folks are surprised when I say that my instructions are “Do whatever music helps you remember, grieve, and celebrate.”
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A Conveniently Delayed Funeral
In as a commodity driven society as is the United States, does a growing practice of delaying funerals inadvertently turn death into something that “fits into our schedules?” Does it communicate, “While grandma’s death was inconvenient, her funeral will not be.”
Read moreLiturgy Concerning Suicide
Those who minister at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in central London have devised a liturgy for those affected by suicide or attempted suicide. A description of the
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Civic celebration or Christian funeral? The memorial for Sen. John McCain
It was a lab for what we do and what we believe about death and liturgy, and an incredibly confusing one at that.
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A Place to Mourn – for Those Who have Lost “Their” Place
How and where to mourn – visibly, noticeably, publicly – when there is no cemetery that houses your beloved dead, and no public memorial to those you left behind?
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