After we die, what to do with our bodies? A spiritual pondering.

Perhaps because it's All Saints Day, or perhaps because I've been thinking more about death and dying for a church project I'm working on, I've been thinking more about how we commit our bodies after death. It seems most people I know are favoring cremation--it's tidy and neat, it's compact; perhaps the idea of distributing ashes over a place we love is meaningful.  And it avoids embalming, which seems to creep people out.  Cremation has been my preferred method, but lately I've been thinking about a good-old pine box.

In my time spent with Native Americans, I have come to appreciate the greater connection to the earth that is part of their spirituality.  They have a deep sense of kinship and relationship with the earth, an ancient way of understanding what has taken the rest of us thousands of years to grasp:  the  idea of the earth as a single system, and how the decay of our bodies participates in that system and helps it regenerate life.  The excellent and sensitive blog on SevenPonds.com shares some of what we can learn from their perspective:

While beliefs and traditions vary widely from tribe to tribe, like religious practices and death rituals the world over, the similarities are perhaps just as striking.  In most cases the dead would be cleansed or purified in some manner, and whether they were cremated, buried, or interred in a wood or adobe tomb, the dead were handled with respect, and separated form the living.  And one further common thread in American Indian beliefs: an overarching respect for Mother Nature; the earth, the sky, the trees and the animals. An acceptance of our oneness with all that is around us. Indeed, one could say that they kept hold of a form of knowledge that more urbanized peoples tried so hard to forget, and are now perhaps coming to recall: that, like it or not, we humans are a part of nature. We suffer from illness, we adapt to changes in the climate. When we die, our bodies decompose, and we become a part of that which we come from. Our biological material is recycled and re-distributed, and, in a small way, even if we do not believe in an afterlife, we live on as our biological matter, the sum total of our lifetime's experiences, is reabsorbed into the cycle of life.  Perhaps, we can try to find some comfort in this.  

The preparation of Jesus' body for burial is described in John 19:40:  They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.  Jewish practices reflect an ancient wisdom of knowing the connectedness of humans and creation; it is embedded in Genesis 3:19, which says: By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  (Put another way, as this beautiful video affirms and astrophysics now confirms, we are made of stardust.)  Accordingly, in Judaism, there is a tradition of earthen burial, and against cremation or embalming.  Jewish law mandates quick burial in a simple pine box.  Traditions in Islam are much the same.

The Jewish tradition of leaving a stone on a grave is a visual sign of their memory of that person. 

Certainly there are also very old traditions of burning the body. An interesting post from A Grave Interest blog looks at a number of different religious traditions, Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, with a tradition of cremation.

But it's not just what we do, but how we imbue it with sacred meaning.  My post today was inspired by a meditation from one of my favorite Episcopalians, the Right Reverend Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, on the burial traditions of his people, the Choctaw.  Reflecting on All Saints Day, he shared:

Long ago my people practiced communal burial. We thought it would be a lonely thing to bury a person alone, so we gathered the bones of our loved ones and buried them together. In this way the bonds of love were unbroken. A person was never outside the community. We were born in community, lived in community, and not even death could remove us from our community. Family was the strength of the people, the sacred way of life. Kinship continued forever. This time of year I always remember that. Those we love are never lost to us.  They are here, now, living their lives in a new way. The bonds of love are unbroken.  

For another perspective on natural burial, you might be interested in the Urban Death Project, a Seattle-based group advocating a process which "safely and gently turns our deceased into soil-building material, creating a meaningful, equitable, and ecological urban alternative to existing options for the disposal of the dead."  As they say:

Because death is momentous, miraculous, and mysterious 

Because the cycles of nature help us grieve and heal

Because our bodies are full of life-giving potential

We propose a new option for laying our loved ones to rest. 

My own view is that "the good death" we all so desire is inclusive of a "good" disposition of our body.  It is one more unique opening for considering where we come from, whose we are, and what  is our legacy within a deeply religious and spiritual context.

However we decide to commit our body to earth, practices that shield us from natural decay, disrespect the body, disconnect us from the earth, dis-involve our families and community, and pollute the earth or needlessly abuse its resources, are spiritually deficient.  We should not miss the opportunity to imbue this most important of passages with sacred meaning.

Here, from our Book of Common Prayer is a prayer which captures the spirit of good burial:

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our sister N., and we commend her to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to shine upon her and be gracious unto her, the Lord lift up his countenance upon her and give her peace.  Amen.