Funerals, Religion and the Not Religious
My 25 year old cousin died overseas a few weeks ago, and because (of course) things take longer to arrange when someone young dies in a foreign country we only had a the funeral last Friday.
The service itself was quite nice and was somewhat unusual for my family in that it all took place in the crematorium (rather than in a church) and was what one would describe as a modern service. There were a couple of poems, a slideshow of photos and tributes from his Facebook message board, a eulogy given by his mother and younger brother and a short address.
As these things go, it was perfectly ok. Later on as I was mingling at the post-funeral reception (?) I found out that the guy leading the service was a local free church minister whose sons had been to primary school with my cousins. And, that didn’t surprise me at all, because although my dad seemed to think it wasn’t very religious, it had several prayers, the coffin was brought in to the chapel to the words “I am the way, the truth and the light”, we all recited the Lord’s Prayer and the address was about God being a rock to those who are suffering. Short of a full requiem mass, I’m not sure how much more religious you could make it.
Which got me thinking. The minister who lead the service was pretty good. It was clear that he knew the family reasonably well, and he had made an effort to cater to their beliefs rather than adhering strictly to his own. Most of my extended family are quite religious - especially the older generation - and all (including me) were brought up going to church every week, so I bet lots of people in attendance wanted and appreciated the sentiment of the thing - God will comfort you in your grief, we hope to meet again in the after life.
Unsurprisingly it didn’t really appeal to me. My cousin was much loved and had obviously had a positive impact on people that he had come into contact with, that will be comfort enough for me without invoking the supernatural. But, what about my funeral?
I don’t really like the idea of some priest or minister putting words into my mouth that I haven’t held in life. I wouldn’t like God to be invoked as I think that God is not real. I don’t like things being involuntarily being blessed in Jesus’ name, and that includes me.
On the other hand, if it’s my funeral, I’ll be dead. Meaning that I don’t get a say for a reason. Funerals aren’t really about the dead who, let’s face it, are going to be just as dead if no funeral ever takes place. Funerals are about the living. If it would make my family more comfortable to give me a Christian burial, why should I complain?
For me personally, it’s complicated by the fact that my parents are my next of kin only because there isn’t anyone else better placed. We get on fine, but I’m just not that close to either of them. And they aren’t exactly on great speaking terms with each other. They’d be the ones deciding on a funeral, and my dad doesn’t know that I’m an atheist, and my mum and one of my brothers think that it’s a phase (the other brother is also an atheist).
Should a funeral be a reflection of the person that has died, or something to comfort the bereaved? And what if those two things collide rather than complement? How much say should you get in your own funeral?
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I Heart Online Communities
I was thinking about the importance of community. Humans seem to be social animals. Even introverts like me can’t usually function happily without other human interactions.
One of the things that I love about the internet is the ability it has given me to make connections. There are of course, the physical connections, the wires from my hotel room on a business trip, and the magic box that I keep at home that connects me through the air.
Then there are the great people that you can meet - mostly on the web. Forums and blogs provide the opportunity for me to connect with like-minded people all the time. Being “that sort” of person, it gives me the opportunity to connect with people who aren’t like-minded as well. Good discussion is valuable.
When a group of people gather together regularly, they seem to form a community pretty spontaneously. You can get to know the personalities and characters. People drop in and out, but they all add value.
This happens to me all the time online. Every time someone comments on a blog I write, or one of the ever increasing list of blogs that I read, or posts in a forum, I learn a little more about them, and about me. It’s easy to start to care for people once you get to know them, and the online communities that I find make me feel warm and fuzzy.
There is an argument that spending too much time wired in to the net leaves you missing out on real life and, taken to extremes, there’s probably some truth in that. But it does miss the somewhat obvious point that everyone you encounter online is also a real person offline. They may represent themselves differently, but they still exist in flesh and blood.
I’d like to thank everyone I’ve met online here at the religious atheist, and propose a toast, to the value of communities.
Image by D’Arcy Norman
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Do You Have a Purpose?
How do you define your own purpose for existance? Do you even need a purpose?
I certainly need something to get me up from day to day, but I think it’s called habit rather than purpose. I’m hoping that most people are the same. I mean, I have plenty of great things going on in my life, but they aren’t what I think about bounding of bed. Most days, I get up because that’s what you do when you’ve woken up, and then at some point later on (since I’m not an early morning person) I might think about what I’m about in the week, but I rarely think about the bigger picture.
I like there to be a bigger picture with some goal to aim for even if I never get there. Although I’d like to think that I work steadily towards a larger goal, that would, in fact, be complete rubbish. What I actually do is flit from one thing to another. In fact I’ve started writing this post at least three times already, trying to think about what I’m going to say.
In a general sense, my chosen purpose is to make things better than they were before, where better is pretty ill-defined (before, is before I was born). It’s not so much that I have chosen this purpose, as that it chose me. I will have been successfull if the world is better when I die, than it was when I was born. Given that that’s the case, it makes sense for me to work towards making things better.
Trouble is, that’s far too big a picture, and I don’t have any concrete details that I want to see happen. I kind of want society to be better, and for me not to have to make too much of a special effort in the process. I just want to live, have fun, and die (with the world a better place) and then fade into the background, firstly of my generation, and later my civilisation, much like we don’t really remember anything about stone age peoples. It’s not a particularly enthralling aim, but I guess that it’s mine.
What about you? Do you have a self-defined purpose, or do you manage perfectly well without?
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