Jedi Funerals

Edan wrote: I used to want to be cremated, but I don't really want my family and friends' last memories of me to be the inside of a crematorium. I don't want my death to be associated with death... if you understand my point.

Don't think about it as associating death with death. Or better yet do. To die is to move on, but also to give back. The body decomposes (or if burned, is a wonderful aid to help new plants grow), and then gives back to the universe. A possibility with cremation is the acknowledgement of non-materialism-an indicator that the body doesn't matter to a Jedi when all is said and done.

Edan wrote: As a Jedi, being buried out in nature feels kind of appropriate as an emphasis on movement of life back to the Force.

A beautiful consideration. Indeed I agree that for a Jedi death should not be mourned, but celebrated, in a manner similar to what you describe.

Funeral services for the dead are really for the living.

My understanding is that the funeral service would be some kind of recognition and celebration of a rite of passage. I like the idea of mythic re-enactment as ritual, but this is done rarely at funerals. Perhaps, the entire service might itself be a retelling of some myth about passages from one realm to another; perhaps, an abbreviated Hero's Adventure where particular events or experiences of the deceased life are remembered within the context of Campbell's outline.

Whatever the deceased believes about the Afterlife will set the mood, ambience, atmosphere of the funeral service. This might be the topic of the introduction, that is, the first speaker would deliver a brief exposition regarding the beliefs of the deceased regarding the Afterlife or the meaning of eternal life. This funeral event reflects Jediism and so parts of the creed, tenets, etc. might be recited.
Followed by a time of meditation.
Music.
Readings.
Poetry.
Reminiscences by the attendees regarding the life of the deceased.
The conclusion of the service is itself a rite of passage as the assembled move from the funeral home to the grave site where the internment ceremony is held.

Following up on the Internment part of the funeral ceremony... ashes can be buried in the cemetery plot, but their portability allows for greater variety of disposition. They can be scattered in a variety of ways or buried in alternative locations of special significance. The significance of the alternative location can itself be integral to the experience of the funeral attendee: seaside, river bank, windy mountain peak, field, pasture, forest, or cliff.

Another experiential aspect of the funeral service is for the attendees themselves to come to some kind of personal, emotional sense of the passage from life to death. The service can be so designed as to help heal emotional wounds or facilitate acceptance, to offer the opportunity for forgiveness. The service can provide the personal emotional passage of the attendee from one state of mind to another. Just as at the wedding ceremony married audience attendees remember the reasons and circumstances of their own wedding, so also, the funeral attendees contemplate their own life and their own inevitable death. The funeral service then is for the living an opportunity to accept their own mortality and to contemplate upon what living well means to them.

The funeral is for the living. I will be burned and the ashes sread over the lake lot. It is the place I feel most at peace. I hope they have a good party and discuss fond memories with each other.

I'll read through this later, but I'm going to post up a funerary program I wrote for Coelescere Enclave (a Jedi Church that didn't take off for various reasons, namely the founder had a crisis at home when the economy went bad).

That might only be the short version, I'm not sure, but it's the important parts of how I believe a Jedi Funeral should be conducted- because let's face it, the funeral isn't for you, it's for the family you leave behind.

Vagabond wrote:

Edan wrote: I used to want to be cremated, but I don't really want my family and friends' last memories of me to be the inside of a crematorium. I don't want my death to be associated with death... if you understand my point.

Don't think about it as associating death with death. Or better yet do. To die is to move on, but also to give back. The body decomposes (or if burned, is a wonderful aid to help new plants grow), and then gives back to the universe. A possibility with cremation is the acknowledgement of non-materialism-an indicator that the body doesn't matter to a Jedi when all is said and done.

It's not cremation I have a problem with, it's the setting of it. The crematorium near me, to which I have unfortunately had to attend funerals at twice in a few years, has the same dull silk flowers, the same drab walls... perhaps it's supposed to be sombre and respectful, I find it depressing. When I think of my nan's death, my last memories are a hospital room and that crematorium.. there's no inspiration for living there.

I quite like Alan's idea of the eulogy being the telling or re-enactment of a myth. Maybe, the recently dead is worked into the story in some way. Interesting.

I understand what people mean about not wanting the funeral to be about death. Respectfully, I disagree. I do want my funeral to be about death. I grew up in a Catholic family, so a viewing of the body came standard. I found what I thought was a direct confrontation with the fact of the mortal body to be comforting. In those instances wherein I was unable to see the body, there was a part of me that still expected to run into the person. I found I needed and appreciated the body in my presence as a way of ending that chapter in my life, as it were.

Still, the talk at those funerals bothers me. It all boiled down to, "he isn't dead." And he is. That individual is gone to us. They are something else now, and this is fine and good, but they are no longer what we knew.

I mentioned thinking I had confronted the fact of the mortal body in Catholic funerals growing up. I thought I had. In India, I saw something else.

In the town where I lived, the bodies of the recently passed were walked through the town, then placed inside a funeral pyre and burnt. Crematoria burn a body is pretty short order. Burning a man to nothing with wood takes all day. And people sat, all day. I did not attend the funeral as such, as I was not invited. But I watched it from the windows.

Added to that were the people that would, as an element of their practice, stay at the funerary grounds at night, covered in the ash from the pyres, considering their place. Graveyard practice is extremely powerful.

In Varanasi, people were burned after death on the Ganges, their ashes spread therein. Again, this took hours. The holy men and the children were not burned. They were often eaten by dogs or, believe it or not, the odd river dolphin. Not fed to them, mind you. Only that, when the bodies were eventually abandoned, the animals moved in to take them.

It's true, I think, that funerals are for the benefit of the living. Lately, when I imagine my death, I think of my son. If all goes as planned, he will survive me and be left with the fact of my corpse. I would ask to not be embalmed, to not have people reassured that I somehow live. I think of confronting my son and the rest of my family with my body as a teaching moment, that death is not so frightening that we must make our dead into birthday cakes. I think I would like some manner of vigil. Quiet. Not to mourn me, or not primarily, but to give the celebrants an opportunity to consider their own deaths, and the lives they would have precede those deaths.

Having my body buried in the woods sounds nice. At the very end of the Zoroastrian funeral practice, they leave the dead at the top of a tower to be eaten by birds. That makes sense to me, having my body returned to the world in such a direct way. I wouldn't need the other parts of the Zoroastrian funeral ritual, as they do not align with my sense of things, but I would borrow the tower.

Edan wrote:

Vagabond wrote:

Edan wrote: I used to want to be cremated, but I don't really want my family and friends' last memories of me to be the inside of a crematorium. I don't want my death to be associated with death... if you understand my point.

Don't think about it as associating death with death. Or better yet do. To die is to move on, but also to give back. The body decomposes (or if burned, is a wonderful aid to help new plants grow), and then gives back to the universe. A possibility with cremation is the acknowledgement of non-materialism-an indicator that the body doesn't matter to a Jedi when all is said and done.

It's not cremation I have a problem with, it's the setting of it. The crematorium near me, to which I have unfortunately had to attend funerals at twice in a few years, has the same dull silk flowers, the same drab walls... perhaps it's supposed to be sombre and respectful, I find it depressing. When I think of my nan's death, my last memories are a hospital room and that crematorium.. there's no inspiration for living there.

That is unfortunate. Perhaps the change should occur with the setting of the crematorium, to make it less depressing. That might be an interesting project to consider. Such could help others in your community reconsider just what death really means.

I am sorry for your loss. I myself lost my grandmother a couple years ago, and my other grandmother may not be far behind; I miss them both, and hope to see my second grandmother before she goes. I do not mean to be disrespectful, but perhaps if you remembered her life, you could find some solace in her death.

Cabur Senaar wrote: How would you like a Jedi funeral to proceed?

I hope it's going to be a celebration! I would want nothing less. Maybe hire Green Day to play a private concert, let everybody party, drink, and be happy for my transformation.

But I'd want my body donated for medical use. After all, what I am I going to need my organs for when I'm dead?