Much of this spiritual guidebook will seem too esoteric for non-pagans, but there remain a number of stories, rituals and prayers within it that will move those of other faiths and that could be adapted for their own ceremonies.
Beloved one, you are dying [dead],
but you are not alone.
We are here with you,
the beloved dead await you.
You go from love
into love.
Carry with you
only love
May our love carry you
and open the way.
I cannot imagine any of the religions objecting to this.
Mother of life,
Mother of death,
here is a spirit so new
that the gates of life and death
are just an archway in her dancing ground.
She has danced her way back to you.
Her passage is easy
but mine is hard.
I wanted to hold her living flesh
and feel her soft breath and her heartbeat.
(I nurtured her in my body;
I would have fed her from my breasts.)
I would have cared for her
and watched her first steps
and listened for her voice.
No other child that may come to me
will ever be what she would have been.
Nothing, nobody, will ever replace her.
Whatever healing I may find,
this loss will always be a part of me.
(Bless my womb, which has the power
to create life and death.)
Bless my arms
that would have embraced her.
Bless my hands that would have lifted her.
Bless my heart that grieves.
This is extraordinarily powerful poetry, the writer a Cranmer for our times, creating a new 20th century missal - would that the Church of England had employed someone with her strength of vision when drawing up its dismal Alternative Prayer Book.
Goddess of death,
I stand here as your priest/ess
knowing that life must be winnowed
to thrive.
This is a holy act I perform:
to open a gateway
for a willing one
to come to you.
This is an act of healing,
a release from suffering,
an end to pain.
Here is one whose arms are open
to embrace you ...
"The most profound teaching," she writes, "from the experience of sudden death, for the survivors, for each one of us, is that it gives us no time for finishing business, for saying goodbyes.
"After hearing of Craig's death, one friend of mine attached a note to my front door. It read simply, 'Always keep your bags packed!' I kept this note taped to my kitchen cabinet for weeks ... When we carry with us the awareness that death may come in this way, we become present fully in the moment. The knowledge that a sudden death may await each one of us challenges us to live life so fully and with such awareness that we are always prepared for death to come."
"I take a deep breath and walk into the centre. I begin with more general words of honour and invocation, talking about why and how very much we want these souls present. Then I begin to call the names - not too fast, and as carefully and accurately as I can ... People often wail or cry quietly ... they have even told me that the moment I called their beloved dead was the single most moving part of the ritual for them ... This feedback convinces me that the work I have done in evolving this rite for communal grieving is valuable."
Libraries should definitely make this book available to their communities, so that readers can pick and choose from the bits within it that inspire them. It should also be required reading for priests and ministers in their training colleges, so as to soften the masculinity of their theology.
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
Book
Orders: To order the Natural Death and Woodland Burial book in
which this piece appears or any of the other books that make up the Global
Ideas Bank.
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