CRAFTING MEANINGFUL
FUNERAL RITUALS
by the same author
Crafting Meaningful Wedding Rituals
A Practical Guide
Jeltje Gordon-Lennox
Foreword by Tiu de Haan
ISBN 978 1 78592 390 6
eISBN 978 1 78450 743 5
Crafting Secular Ritual
A Practical Guide
Jeltje Gordon-Lennox
Foreword by Isabel Russo
ISBN 978 1 78592 088 2
eISBN 978 1 78450 350 5
Emerging Ritual in Secular Societies
A Transdisciplinary Conversation
Edited by Jeltje Gordon-Lennox
ISBN 978 1 78592 083 7
eISBN 978 1 78450 344 4
CRAFTING
MEANINGFUL
FUNERAL
RITUALS
A PRACTICAL GUIDE
Jeltje Gordon-Lennox
Foreword by Margaret Holloway
Unless identified with a particular historical figure, the stories and narratives in this
book are fiction based on fact. The situations described and the characters portrayed
are composites. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Identity icon by © Adaiyaalam CC BY-SA
All other figures, photos and icons © J. Gordon-Lennox
Photos © as indicated.
First published in 2020
by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 73 Collier Street
London N1 9BE, UK and
400 Market Street, Suite 400 Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
www.jkp.com
Copyright © Jeltje Gordon-Lennox 2020
Foreword copyright © Margaret Holloway 2020
Author photo copyright © Marc Hoeksema 2020
Front cover image source: Sophie Standing
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN 978 1 78592 389 0
eISBN 978 1 78450 746 6
Printed and bound in Great Britain
In memory of Michael Picucci, PhD
psychologist, Somatic Experiencing practitioner (SEP)
and pioneer in humanistic ritual as resource
Oh how wrong you are
to think that the years
will never end.
We must die.
Life is a dream,
that seems so sweet,
but joy is all too brief.
We must die.
Of no avail is medicine,
of no use is quinine,
we cannot be cured.
We must die…
We die singing,
we die playing the cittern,
the bagpipes, yet die we must.
We die dancing, drinking, eating;
with this carrion, die we must…
(Anonymous lyrics of seventeenth-century
music known as Passacaglia della vita)
CONTENTS
Foreword by Margaret Holloway
Acknowledgements
Preface
Part I: MOrtaLItY
11
15
17
23
1. My Death Waits…
2. Gone Too Soon
24
36
Part II: OUr NEED FOr rItUaL
51
3. The Sense of Ritual
4. Preplanning Makes Sense
52
71
Part III: CraFtING tHE CErEMONY
91
5. Planning the Ceremony
6. Creating the Ceremony
7. Realizing the Ceremony
92
111
132
Part IV: tHE FUtUrE OF tHE DEaD
147
8. New Mourning
148
Glossary
Resources
References
Index
160
167
173
181
RITUAL TOOLBOX
LIST OF TOOLS WITH THEIR ICONS
SEVEN DESTRESSING TECHNIQUES
Remedies (Smell and touch)
Hugging (Using touch with others)
Butterfly hug (Using touch alone)
Near and far (Eyes)
Humming (Voice and breath)
Heavenly drum (Ears)
Finger labyrinth (Touch)
Questionnaire on my ritual profile
Coronach will
Inventory on ritual profile for funerals
PLANNING PHASE
Announcing a death
Checklist for a funeral ceremony
Who presides?
Prioritizing
CREATING PHASE
Why and how?
Core values
Two inboxes
Writing a meaningful text
Just the right music
Small gestures, big impact
Coherence test
Format of the ceremony
REALIZING PHASE
Guidelines for readers
Ritualizing step by step
Notes
Pages marked with a can be downloaded from www.jkp.com/catalogue/
book/9781785923890.
FOREWORD
Funerals go back a long way. Evidence of the living burying the dead exists
from pre-historic times, accompanied by ever more elaborate associated
practices. Central to these was, and is, the funeral. We discover a curious
conundrum when we study funerals and memorials over time and across
civilisations: the present frequently mirrors the forms and practices of the
past yet significant cultural shifts can also be observed at particular points
in history (Inall and Lillie 2018). One such shift began in the developed
world in the second half of the twentieth century. In Britain, for example,
mourners began to express dissatisfaction with the traditional religious
funeral, alienated by pronouncements and rites which they found
meaningless and a ceremony which provided neither comfort nor a
reflection of the person who had gone (Littlewood 1992). In 1980, Barbara
Smoker, President of the National Secular Society, set out the purposes
of a secular funeral to the UK Cremation Society Conference, including
the requirement that it should provide the opportunity for ceremonial
and ritual ‘leave-taking’ of the lost loved one.
Decades later, very few families and friends choose to conduct the
funeral themselves (in the way Smoker had envisaged) and a leading
UK journalist expressed dissatisfaction with the celebration-of-the-life
funerals that have become the twenty-first century norm, describing
traditional rituals as, ‘infinitely more cathartic’ (Coward 2002). The
reason for this unease, we discover, is that bereaved families and friends
may need help to translate their deepest feelings into words and actions
that meet those needs (Holloway et al. 2013). It is this void that ritual
practitioners, like Jeltje Gordon-Lennox, seek to address.
The notion of the life-centred funeral, in which the funeral address
(if there is one) takes the form of a eulogy, is now firmly established in
secular culture and has largely replaced theological content in funerals
taken by a Christian religious minister. Personalised, customised funerals,
with funeral directors keen to facilitate choice and celebrants of all
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Crafting Meaningful Funeral rituals
persuasions committed to providing the funeral that the families want
in content, style and tone, presenting the person who has died through
the recollections of those who mourn them, may seem exactly what
contemporary society requires.
What is missing from that description of the modern funeral, however,
is precisely the reason why funerals developed and have continued over
time and across cultures. It is not remembering the life lived with which
we struggle, but confrontation with the harsh realities of death. Rite,
ritual and ceremony are the tools that human beings have always relied
upon to negotiate this difficult terrain, but where religion and social
status once provided the framework, participants in the modern funeral
must find this, at least in part, for themselves.
Meaning in the face of death is sought, created and taken (Holloway
et al. 2013) in a creative and dynamic process in which symbols and rituals
allow personal meanings to be experienced in a shared public and social
act. Traditional sources of comfort may be drawn upon but imbued with
contemporary touches – a more diffuse spirituality, including for the
holder of religious beliefs; community support received from distant
friends of the deceased or sometimes, ‘stranger mourners’ through social
media (Holloway et al. 2018). In cultures that favour individualism over
community, it is telling that we cannot countenance a funeral without
mourners; funeral directors and crematorium staff ‘stand in’ to obviate
such an occurrence. In a recently reported story, thirty people attended
the funeral in Orangetown, New York of an older woman, for them a
complete stranger, after a young girl found out that nobody was going to
attend the funeral and rallied support on Facebook (Warren 2016).
This complexity of emotion, beliefs and context runs through Crafting
Meaningful Funeral Rituals. Jeltje Gordon-Lennox presents her book as a
practical guide for ‘amateur ritual makers’ – ordinary people who find
their day-to-day lives disrupted by the extraordinariness (as it appears
for many of us today) of death and do not have the familiarity with ritual
to draw on its resources; she also suggests that it might serve as an ‘aidememoire’ for professional celebrants. Although incorporating practical
exercises and taking the reader through the steps and task associated
Foreword
with arranging and creating a funeral, this is not simply a ‘how-to-do’
manual, however.
Gordon-Lennox embeds discussion of each step in the attendant
emotions and interpersonal dynamics, weaving together real-life stories
from her practice into a funerals narrative that facilitates each reader
understanding and creating their own story – their personal ‘ritual
profile’. This notion is made up of both ‘ritual identity’ – the individual’s
identification with particular forms of ritual – and ‘ritual practice’ – the
style of ritual with which the person feels most comfortable. Repeatedly,
she asks that we question the purpose of a particular act or use of symbol
so that we can tailor it to our own needs. She assures us that a life-centred
funeral enables those bereaved to put the life and loss into perspective,
whatever the circumstances of the death. Ritual is therapeutic, but it is
not therapy.
The funeral is presented by Gordon-Lennox as the opportunity to lay
down those practices that will serve the bereaved through the ongoing
process of grief. Memorialisation is discussed as the ‘life after death’ –
whether that is understood in secular, humanist or religious terms. This
is an important addition to the funerals literature that leaves us with
the final disposal of the body – the period straight after the funeral long
recognised in bereavement research as a lonely and difficult time (e.g.
Parkes 1996). Study of memorialisation indicates that meaning-making
lies at its heart and has always done so. We draw on tradition and past
practice, but in the twenty-first century we are seeing a move away from
the taking of meaning from handed-down beliefs and practices to the
creation of personally customised meanings (Holloway et al. 2019). This
is what Crafting Meaningful Funeral Rituals is all about.
Margaret Holloway
Emeritus Professor, University of Hull, UK
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Crafting Meaningful Funeral rituals
REFERENCES
Coward, R. (2002) ‘The problem with grieving.’ The Guardian (10 April).
Holloway, M., Adamson, S., Argyrou, V., Draper, P. and Mariau, D. (2013) ‘“Funerals
aren’t nice but it couldn’t have been nicer”: The makings of a good funeral.’
Mortality 18, 1, 30-53.
Holloway, M., Hukelova, M. and Bailey, L. (2018) Displaying Self: Memorialisation
in Contemporary Society. University of Hull.
Holloway, M., Lillie, M., Dikomitis, L., Evans, N., Goodhead, A., Nicol, L., Bailey,
L., Hukelova, M., and Inall, Y. (2019) Remember Me: The Changing Face of
Memorialisation. University of Hull.
Inall, Y. and Lillie, M. (2018) Deep in Time: Meaning and Mnemonic in Archaeological
Studies of Death. University of Hull.
Littlewood, J. (1992) Aspects of Grief: Bereavement in adult life. London: Routledge.
Parkes, C.M. (1996) Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (3rd edn.). London:
Routledge.
Warren, L. (2016) ‘Dozens of strangers turn up at funeral for elderly woman after
learning no was attending.’ Inside Edition. 16 August. Accessed on 7 February
2019 at www.insideedition.com/headlines/18194-dozens-of-strangers-turnup-at-funeral-for-woman-after-learning-no-one-was-attending
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Write. Leave behind some kind of monument to prove you lived, advised
Pliny the Younger (ca. 62–105 ce). Many people contributed directly or
indirectly to the writing of this book, including Pliny, whose lucid outlook
on life and practical advice to writers appears fresh even today. Although
he did not have a publishing team behind him, like me he relied on others
to get his texts in shape.
First off, I want to express my gratitude to Natalie K. Watson. Her
enthusiastic support lead to the publication of three practical guides on
creating secular ritual. The team at Jessica Kingsley Publishers admirably
rose to the challenge of making my approach to ritual accessible. After
the publication of Crafting Secular Ritual: A Practical Guide (2017), which
covers six life events or occasions, it was decided that the two main life
events in Western societies, weddings and funerals, needed in-depth
treatment. Crafting Meaningful Wedding Rituals: A Practical Guide came
out earlier this year.
Many thanks to the team at JKP for seeing me through yet another
book: team leader Emily Badger kept everyone on track, production editor
Hannah Snetsinger’s amazing patience and organizational abilities always
impress me, Helen Kemp’s eagle eye took care of copy detail, Alexandra
Holmes for her help with proofreading and publicity executive Lily
Bowden was always there with expert advice. Their close attention to
the myriad of details are what turn a manuscript into a book.
Kyle Tevlin, Liselotte Horneman Kragh, Siobhán Cahalan, Anne
Berk, Marty Rienstra, Liana Netto, Irene Stengs, Ellen Dissanayake
and Matthieu Smyth deserve credit for wading through parts of early
versions of the manuscript, as does Sharon Miller who tightened up
the questionnaires on ritual profiles. Their pertinent questions and
suggestions helped me reflect on my approach and unpack some of my
denser ideas.
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Crafting Meaningful Funeral rituals
I would like to express my gratitude to to Albert Bell Jr. for his
writings on Pliny and to Margaret Holloway for her visionary work on
contemporary funerals and memorials. I am grateful for the support of
my colleagues of the European Ritual Network (ERN): Nina Faartoft,
Isabel Russo, Tale Pleym, Ida van der Lee, Thomas Wegmüller, Johanna
Neussi and Joanna Wojtkowiak. Special thanks goes to Ida for creating
public ritual art and to Iben From at the Silkeborg Bad KunstCentret for
accommodation. Heartfelt thanks to curator Anne Berk and to my sister
Anastasia Aukeman for their artistic vision and their support of me and
my work.
Love and thanks to my children, Sushila and Jefferson, for distracting
me regularly with their jokes and stories. Above all, I acknowledge Ian’s
immeasurable contributions to my life, among which is a penchant for
detective novels set in unusual times and places such as ancient Rome
and modern-day Denmark. This year marks 30 years of mutual support
in the pursuit of our respective artistic projects.
PREFACE
No one really wants to have to go to a funeral – much less prepare one.
Funerals make us think about the end of life, the death of others and our
own mortality. Each one of us has a deeply human story of love and hope,
of encounters and disappearances, of life and death. Life has a beginning,
a middle and an end. Death represents that inconceivable final chapter.
Funerals can help us come to terms, not with death per se, but with the
fact that death is part of life. When all is said and done, funerals reflect
first of all our relationships to the dead and then the place we give them
in society.
TRANSFORMING OUR TIES TO THE DEAD
We like to think of funerals as initiating a process of transformation that
allows the bereaved to loosen their ties to the deceased and then, as best
they can, reweave the fabric of their daily lives around an irreplaceable
loss. Whether and how this happens depends who dies, how they die and
on what is now referred to as the ‘funeralcare’ process.
Twenty years ago, a family called on me to do a conventional religious
ceremony for their 96-year-old matriarch. During our first meeting, I
learned that the woman had turned her back on organized religion at
age 16 – and never looked back. When I asked the family if they thought
a religious ceremony was appropriate, her grandson blurted: ‘We have to
do something! She wasn’t a dog!’ I reassured them that I would do the
funeral but insisted they work with me on a ceremony respectful of
the choices the woman had made 80 years beforehand and the values by
which she lived.
A conversation with a Buddhist priest revealed that he increasingly
finds himself in a similar predicament. People who want to do something
but feel estranged from their religion of origin – usually Christianity,
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Crafting Meaningful Funeral rituals
Judaism or Islam – ask him to perform a Buddhist funeral for a nonpractising friend or family member. They often want him to preside
a ‘copy–paste’ ceremony composed of a eulogy for the deceased and
‘sanitised Buddhist-like texts and rituals’ gleaned from the internet.
[AQ]Figure 0.1. Family gravestone
Located in Boxgrove Priory Churchyard, Boxgrove, West Sussex, United Kingdom.
© J. Gordon-Lennox
In the face of uncertainty, threat and death, human beings feel compelled
to do something, usually with or for others, to alleviate their anxiety, fear
and sense of powerlessness. This irresistible need to act or carry out a
series of actions – even acts radically opposed to the deceased’s life and
convictions – drew my attention to the number of times I was being asked
to perform ‘a nice ceremony’ (and, sotto voce) ‘with no references to god
or religion, please’. It also made me keenly aware of how untenable the
situation felt to us all.
Preface
CONFUSION ABOUT RITUAL PROFILE
Many people are confused about what I came to label their ‘ritual profile’.
This uncertainty leads to muddled ‘ritual strategy’. Asking a religious
leader for a non-religious funeral makes about as much sense as going to
a vegan shopkeeper for eggs or meat. Rather than bemoan the fact that
people knock at the wrong door for non-religious ceremonies, I began
searching for suitable alternatives. In the process, I became aware that
my own ritual profile had changed. Ritual studies scholar Catherine Bell’s
description of what happened to her resembles my experience:
Once I was a believer, thoughtfully and intimately committed, and
then I was no longer one, with a different set of thoughts and emotions.
While I was able to ‘explain’ my believing and my not-believing in the
popular Freudian patois of the day, I wanted to assemble a fuller picture
of what had happened and explore whether what was true for me might
be useful for understanding others. (C. Bell n.d.)
As a ritual studies scholar, Bell wanted to know what had happened. As
a practitioner, I needed to know what comes next.1 Taking god from the
heart of a funeral ceremony felt like a brash, radical and unmapped move.
In fact, many scholars still hold that secular ceremonies are devoid of
ritual. Convinced that the formerly religious can celebrate their life events
meaningfully, I searched for new forms, words and gestures; I even asked
myself what one should wear to preside such a ceremony. Journalists
soon challenged me with their own questions: Do life event ceremonies
performed outside of a religious context count? If so, can they have the
power of religious rites? What do these ceremonies look like? What about
a wake in a bar or dancing on the beach?
In my efforts to accompany people as they strove to meet their need
1
Batja Mesquita’s work on a concept she calls emotion acculturation is useful for
understanding how one set of thoughts and emotions can be replaced by another
set. Experiencing emotions normative to one’s subculture is associated with higher
wellbeing and lower symptom reporting (Mesquita, Boiger and De Leersnyder 2016).
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Crafting Meaningful Funeral rituals
for ceremony without god and religion I learned what it is that makes
secular rituals different. Putting the person who has died at the heart of
the ceremony profoundly shifts its focus and purpose. A ceremony that is
respectfully centred on the deceased’s life, values and relationships can be
deeply personal, connect people to each other, remind us of the natural
rhythms of life and even mitigate trauma. For this to happen, the setting
must feel safe and the ceremony must be planned, created and realized by
those who knew the person well. This knowledge unexpectedly led me to
develop a creative way to craft new non-religious rituals.
[AQ]Figure 0.2. Inventor Nikola Tesla’s funerary urn
This gilded urn with Tesla’s ashes is shaped as a sphere, his favourite geometrical object.
It is located in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.
© Martin Lopatka, CC BY-SA
There are many books about how to die a good death and just as many
about how to face illness and mourn (see Resources). The aim of this book
is to provide a simple hands-on guide to creating secular funeral rituals
that honour our ties with the dead. Each chapter opens with a short story
and then examines an aspect of a new approach to the practice of artfilled ritual.
Preface
If you are pressed for time and eager to begin crafting a funeral
ceremony, feel free to skim through Part I, which covers our own mortality
and the loss of a loved one. Humans have always understood about death
and loss, grief and consolation. By stepping into the past to look at Pliny’s
views on mortality and his experience of death in first-century Rome, we
take a bit of distance from our own fears and anxiety. We see too that a
secular approach to ritual is far from new. Part II provides an updated
view of contemporary ritual and includes tools essential to the crafting
process, such as destressing techniques designed to meet our need to feel
safe, notes on how to write up our last wishes and two practical tools on
ritual profile and strategy.
Once you determine your own ritual profile and strategy you are
ready to move on to Part III, the heart of the guide, where ritual design
and materials are discussed. Specially developed tools help determine
who or what is at the centre of the funeral, the values to convey through
the ceremony and how to transmit them simply and authentically. A
checklist keeps you on course and frees you up to fully experience the
entire process.
Part IV closes with descriptions of three public memorialization
events and reflections on the future of our relationship with the dead.
Funeral terminology that may be foreign to many of us appears in a
glossary. A short resource section with books, booklets and informative
website links is completed with notes on dying and bereavement.
In short, this versatile guide provides the essentials you need to plan,
create and realize a funeral that is adapted to your specific situation
and context. Those who want recipes for ready-made ceremonies must
look elsewhere. ‘Ritual is work, endless work. But, it is among the most
important things that we humans do’ (Seligman et al. 2008, p.182).
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Crafting Meaningful Funeral rituals
Note: This guide is designed for amateur ritualmakers, who need
to craft a secular ceremony to mark a death. The tools presented
here have been forged, tested and tempered with individuals,
families and professional funeral celebrants of diverse cultural
backgrounds and language groups.
Although it was not originally my intention, I was delighted
to learn that the guides also serve institutions in the renewal of
traditional religious rites. I may no longer practise formal religion
but I admire vital spirituality in all its forms and have great respect
for those with devout practice.
The book may serve as an aide-mémoire for professional
celebrants, but it is not a substitute for celebrant training. If you
are searching for a training course, select one that offers personal
attention from a skilled instructor, a mentoring system and the
stimulation and support of peers. Online instruction is popular now
and useful for studying facts. Learning about ritual accompaniment,
how to deal with complex situations and preside at real funeral
ceremonies requires face-to-face interaction – just like ritualizing.
Digitally signed by Jeltje
GORDON LENNOX
DN: cn=Jeltje GORDON LENNOX,
o=Association Ashoka, ou,
email=jeltje@gordon-lennox.ch,
c=CH
Date: 2019.07.18 21:48:07 +01'00'