Funeral & a Near Tragedy
I'm not sure I should be blogging what will follow, but I'm really underwhelmed by the creeping "entertainization" of funerals. I recently went to one with all the bells and whistles; there was a powerpoint presentation with pictures of the recently deceased and a moving talk made by a nephew that left me choking back tears even though I'd only met her a couple times. It seems we're upping the ante, setting a precedent such that the next funeral will have to be even more powerfully moving or - or what? - or we will have let that deceased and the immediate family down?
I suppose the introduction of emotional speeches and pictures is the way funerals have to evolve because it's the only way we seem to be able to say that something is precious, in this case a life. And it's more important to emphasize the sancity of each human life than to complain over the way it's done. Unfortunately, we are no longer impressed by ritual or by words that have been heard before. Certainly it's all about the personal now, and ritual is seen as impersonal. Now we seem to downplay anything that isn't creative. And so now the need, for example, for weddings to be on mountain cliffs or overlooking oceans, with words made up by the couple.
We seem so far from the mindset of praying for the dead. Instead it's taken for granted they're already in Heaven and have received their crown. It's far better to have people pray for you than praise you, since the Bible says that human praise is a thin gruel worth nothing (although with respect to praying for the dead, it always irks me that King Henry VIII paid for thousands of Masses to be said for him. God is not fooled. I do hope Henry VIII is in heaven though I don't feel particularly motivated to pray for that end.)
Anyway, the minister for this service spoke powerfully but the presupposition that there is no Purgatory or Hell (for her) means that there was no reason to pray for her. Thus, it was mainly about evangelizing the family by recalling that we trust the biblical promises of an afterlife. Which is fine, I understand that. But then someone had to make "the talk".
Well someone did and they did a real good job of it. And another family member confided to me that it might've had a completely unexpected consequence. No one can know if it did. But some are asking why another family member, an attractive sixteen-year old girl and member of the high school band, tried to kill herself four days after attending the funeral. Some are saying that all the praise and adulation of (instead of prayer) was something this sixteen-year old craved and this was additional incentive to obtain it in the most grim way imaginable.
Fortunately the overdose was discovered in time by the "luck" (grace) of a family member being unable to sleep at three a.m. (who usually sleeps like a rock) and finding her. She's in the hospital now and not the grave, thanks be to God.
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