Prof calls for raising up the sacred in burial acts_111003

Posted: 11/07/03

Prof calls for raising up the sacred in burial acts

By Chris Meehan

Religion News Service

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (RNS) –Burial rituals of the Tlingit Indians in Alaska contain all the sacred and ancient elements sorely lacking in many modern funerals, according to theologian Thomas Long.

Long, professor of preaching in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, believes American society is missing that ongoing sense of the sacred and its meaning in death.

What happens at funerals and burials speaks of the faith of a culture, professor Thomas Long says.

“We are seeing deep changes in our social fabric,” Long said during a recent symposium for funeral directors, clergy and hospice workers.

In funerals and death rituals, Long said, society “needs a sacred sense of community and of the person being very sacred. … But these things are under attack and being eroded in our mobile culture.”

“The underlying meaning of how we look at death has shifted,” Long said. “Instead of seeing a dead, sacred person as traveling to a new land accompanied the last mile by the community, we now see the deceased as dead and going nowhere.”

As part of his research on the relationship between worship and Christian practices, Long traveled to Prince of Wales Island in Alaska to view firsthand the death rituals of Native Americans.

He chose the Tlingit tribe because members hold funerals in a manner that dates back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

There are two bands of the tribe, one known as the Ravens and the other as the Eagles. Each takes on everyday duties for members of the other band when a death occurs.

“As soon as word goes out that an Eagle died, the Ravens take care of the mundane aspects of life. This makes it possible for the Eagles to have the space they need,” Long said. Roles are reversed when a Raven dies.

Evident in this is the tight, communal nature of the Tlingits' funeral rites, which include:

Cleansing and preparation of the body by family members.

Transportation of the body in a simple coffin to the community hall, where residents gather for an all-night vigil.

Taking the coffin the next day to a church for a Christian funeral service.

After the service, driving the coffin to the water's edge, where the deceased is loaded into a boat and accompanied by the tribe's chief and the minister to a burial island.

A year later, holding a ceremony at which a tombstone is placed on the grave.

“This is not simply a series of steps,” Long said. “This is actually a piece of community drama. Properly understood, these activities are derived out of profound values.”

Those values reflect a belief that the deceased is a sacred person of worth who “is traveling to a new land and who the community is accompanying the last mile of the way.”

The Tlingits act out their communal drama to honor the dead person but not just as someone moving into another realm of being. They also believe the body itself and not just the spirit has depth and purpose.

They show in their rituals “that the dead person is someone who took up space,” Long said. “They had children and jobs. They occupied ground.”

Long was joined in the presentation by essayist, poet and funeral director Thomas Lynch and Detroit-area funeral director David Techner.

“Death is an opportunity to help people get in touch with their own faith, to discuss the great mystery and the afterlife,” said Techner, a producer of the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Generation to Generation–Jewish Families Talk about Death.”

Techner criticized those who fail to include children in the process of the death and burial of a parent, sibling, grandparent or close friend.

Children understand much more about death or are able to as long as adults speak to them in terms that they can grasp, he said.

“We need to start making funerals meaningful for these kids,” Techner said. “Remember that children are part of a community. They grieve. They mourn. They have questions just like adults.”

Lynch decried the funeral rituals, or lack of them, he often encounters today. He said families call him from another city, ask him to cremate a dead parent and then to ship the ashes.

Techner described a couple who wanted to make sure the funeral went fast so they could go on vacation.

“For the first time in the history of our culture, we've got the warm fuzzies and the ways to deal with mindless grief,” but where does that leave us? Lynch asked.

Yet another sign of the times is the growing trend of holding memorial services in the weeks or months after the death. When this happens, there is no coffin or container of ashes in church.

“Would you do a baptism without the baby there?” Lynch asked. “The most convenient thing to do when someone dies is nothing at all.”

The changing landscape–the almost cavalier way in which some people deal with death–is likely to require new but meaningful rituals, Long said.

What they may be, he's not sure. But of one thing he is certain: “As ministers, funeral directors and hospice workers, we need to speak to people, pray with them and indicate our friendship by our presence. We need to talk to them about the holy responsibility we have of taking care of the dead.”