Adult Formation, Funeral Planning Part I, 4/28/2019

Well, good morning, everybody.

Thank you for coming on Low Sunday to uh a workshop that ostensibly is not auspiciously titled, but uh grateful for your trust and your interest.

And so um what I wanted to talk about today and probably next week too, it probably is a two-part deal, is really how it is that you can care for the people that you love.

And anecdotally, I've said this already.

The worst thing that happens is people come in and they say, Well, I don't know what to do about mom or about dad or grandma.

Uh no clue at all.

And they struggle through these really, really basic questions.

And oddly enough, I I want to take on as much of this as I can.

Um, some people say, like, this happened um just three weeks ago with Jenny and I.

Well, I've cremated my husband, and I don't know how the church feels about that.

You know, I mean, it's sort of like, well, you've already done it.

So um I, you know, I can refer, you know.

I mean, it's a funny, it's a funny bit, right?

I mean, again, we just we don't always have thoughts about that, and I'd love to give you as much information about decisions like that as possible, knowing that I don't know everything, but that I probably do on average 12 of these a year.

Uh so you can you can do the arithmetic on how many of these I've done.

Okay.

Um, first, though, before I walk through, you know, I hope by now you've got this guide, and um we have this on the website as well.

So if you lose it or if you want to send it to your children or friends, listen, it's not perfect.

And if you in in doing this are like, you know, Mike, you really need to conclude include a bunch of sections, please, and I will.

Um, I don't mean to make it multiple pages, except the goal is that you can sort of make a checklist and walk through some of the most relevant things you you can do.

Um if you fill this out and make a copy of it, or you give it to me, I'll make a copy, and I'll put it in a folder here with your name on it.

Whether you want to have your service or plans here done or not, then we'll have an external copy.

Does that make sense?

So I'd like to cover you as best as I can.

And uh again, this is something really helpful, I think, to walk through with your spouse and um any people who come after you.

My daughter's too young, frankly, for me to walk through this with her.

However, uh, it is something that my mother needs because she is, we've decided, the first guardian should we both um no longer be here for our daughter.

Does that does that make sense?

So you you probably do want to pass this on to the executor of your estate or your will.

Okay.

Um can I start out by asking you if you have questions about the process or about things like cremation or obituaries or powers of attorney?

I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

Uh otherwise I'll go through this form.

But perhaps you've come with questions already.

Please.

Um I changed the logo to be our new logo.

No, but uh but the emphasis always changes because I've done more since last year, if that makes sense.

And we didn't do last year anyway, we did it three years ago.

Yeah.

So we try to do, I try to do it every couple of years because I'll tell you, I filled one of these out for myself four years ago, and much of it has changed.

I live in a different place.

The people who I would tap to do things like my eulogy and celebrate me has changed.

You know, some of it has some of it actually probably won't ever change unless those people die.

Um, but others of it has changed.

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Uh so actually, you know, it's a really great question, and I want to talk about church, period.

And this I think is really, really important, and then answer that question as well.

There is a lot of uh folks that come to me, no matter what we're doing, a wedding or a funeral or something else, that say, Well, I know we can't have this at the thing.

How do you know that?

Because some other priest has told you what, usually he, sorry, usually he does that, what he won't let you do.

Please ask your cleric because it varies person to person.

Now, quite honestly, are there rules against it?

No, there's the rector's decision.

So maybe you've heard there can't be photography at weddings.

That's a rector's decision, not a church decision.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Now you may not want photography at your wedding.

Fine, but if you do, ask the rector.

You may want to have live music.

Why on earth would the church prohibit that?

Now, I would tell you, if you wanted to play Highway to Hell at your funeral, I I would want to talk to you about that song selection.

Uh because that's probably the worst song choice possible for the day.

Uh but uh there are other folks that'll say, well, I know we can only play bits out of the hymnal.

Well, you really don't know that until you ask.

I mean, quite honestly, when people ask me, can I have this hit this song, which is a secular hymn, my my response is, listen, do we believe that God is only in some places or do we believe that God is everywhere?

What do you say?

So is God to be found in secular music or only in sacred?

I mean, let's take let's take our theology seriously.

Now, again, uh what's helpful for me is to hear what you've got in mind.

Because, like I said, if you want to play, if you'd like got pinha, if you like pina caladas at your funeral, uh I don't really understand that, but I would love to hear the story behind it because quite honestly, when I get up to commend you to the Lord, I would love to say what's behind that song choice.

And if I don't have anything to say about it, well, I don't know if we should do it.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Some people are deeply touched by that song.

Open bars.

Um, you know, uh, the truth is, and this is something that that I, you know, and and and I've never been to a church my whole I used to be uh a Methodist way back in the back in the day.

And the joke in the South was that the difference between the Baptist and a Methodist was that a Methodist would talk to you in the liquor store.

Of course, the Episcopalian owns the liquor store, but uh, you know, I probably shouldn't joke like that.

However, um my Methodist church had a home, they had some fabulous home brewers.

I mean, they almost could sell their product and and they were they were courted to do it, but they would never have it on the church grounds, and I think part of it we get is because there is a potential to overdo it.

So my thing is listen, we we celebrate life here, and and I err on the side of that.

However, if we had problems, well, we would have to regulate that.

Since coming here, I've I haven't really seen a problem with what people do at a church lunch or a church dinner.

I haven't.

So um that's the whole trick is if there's more than so many people, what we do is we insist, and the city insists this as well, that there's an officer hired to do private security, and frankly, that takes care of that.

Okay?

Now, listen, what you do in your home is what you do.

However, if people choose to have a glass of wine or even a cocktail, I'm a little more flexible about that than other clergy are because I think that's normal part of life.

I do.

Um, but again, you gotta know that if you go to do something like that, the city insists that there be an officer to monitor the safety of it.

You can push me back on that if you'd like to, as with all things.

But that's my answer, Greg.

I don't know what my successor, whenever they come, will say.

And here's the thing about the Episcopal Church the one who decides is the rector.

If you go to a mission, the one who decides is kind of the vicar, but in general it's really the bishop.

Because the the bishop is the rector of missions.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

So it this all is going to vary church to church, which means if you have a funeral plan here that includes a secular song, and you move to Beaumont, they may not do it there.

Does that make sense what I'm telling you?

Which is why you want to stay here your whole life.

Because you know you'll get what we negotiate, right?

As long as you're still the rector.

As long as I'm still the rector.

Yeah.

No, that is the thing.

There are very few things that I can do that will outlast me in terms of liturgies.

Does that does that make sense what I'm saying?

I can do a lot of things that outlast me otherwise, but liturgically, um I I I I can't.

Um okay, other other questions up front?

Are you going to cover uh cremation?

Yeah, I really plan to do it.

Okay.

So well, maybe I should take it on first.

Maybe I should take cremation on first because a lot of people ask me again the church's stance on cremation.

And just a brief, brief, brief history, not to bore you the tears here, but my parents, who are, I mean, they're the low 70s, but for what it's worth, are actually older than their age betrays because they grew up in rural Kentucky.

So honestly, they're they're not one generation behind me, they're they're two.

I I I hope that makes sense what I'm saying, um, are dead set against cremation, dead set against it.

Um and actually, in in their funeral plan, I think they they intend to have a wake or a viewing or something like this.

Um that in just a second.

Uh they sort of think that you need your body to be resurrected.

That's a very old tradition, quite honestly.

And if I can reflect it to you in the New Testament, in the first letter to the Thessalonians, uh, this is the oldest book of our New Testament, the oldest chronologically.

Um, Paul talks about those who are asleep, his his uh euphemism for dead, will their bodies will come up out of the grave.

So the earliest Christians believed in a physical resurrection, i.e., you get your body back.

I don't think any of you believe in that.

I I really don't.

I think you imagine images of heaven to be somewhat physical, because that's all we know.

I mean, if you can see the fourth dimension, apparently Einstein could, uh, you might have images like that.

But in general, we have like physical anthropomorphistic visions of how this is gonna work, and there's some physicality to it.

I mean, look at angels, right?

Angels are just like pretty people with wings.

I'm gonna tell you biblically, they are not.

They're really like monstrous looking things, but but we we don't like to look at monsters, we're like pretty things.

So um that's what we do.

So uh so for my folks, you know, if you were to mess with your body, you would mess with your resurrection.

But now let's let's let's think about that reasonably, because that is what the Episcopal Church invites us to do: to think about scripture and reason and tradition all at the same time.

And and here's the bottom line for me other priests might tell you something different.

Resurrection is a miracle, period, don't you think?

As in it is not natural, it is supernatural.

So, does it take that much more superpower to resurrect some ashes than some bones?

I I I don't want to sound silly, but I kind of think it's a silly thing.

People have been cremating about as long as they've been burying.

Right?

Uh it it's not in the Western tradition.

Our tradition really comes more than anything from Judy from Judaism.

And if you know anything about Judaism, we don't follow this.

Does anybody know uh how this works?

How Jewish funeral rites work?

Anyone at all?

So I used to be a chaplain in a heart hospital for mostly geriatric patients in Atlanta, which is like the New York of the South, right?

So, you know, when somebody dies in the hospital, you know where they initially go, right?

The body goes to the morgue, not if they're Jewish.

If you put a Jewish body in the morgue, you're looking for major trouble like litigation.

The Jewish body has to be buried within 24 hours, and it cannot go to a place where there's other dead people.

So you leave that body in the room until the Jewish mortician comes and they take it directly away, and within 24 hours you've had the funeral.

That's the rule.

This is part of how we got where we are.

Belief in a physical resurrection and in this tradition that you gotta do this really quick.

Okay?

Part of what's happened, you know, cremation-wise, really, is that we've been exposed to parts of the rest of the world, like India, where cremation is preferred over burial.

So that's entered our tradition, and of course, one of the other things that's really come in the last 20 years is people have realized the economy of it.

Is it okay if I tell you the economy?

To be cremated at Crowder Brothers, it's probably going to cost you somewhere about twelve hundred dollars.

Uh to be buried with your body intact is going to cost you in excess of three, four thousand dollars, and that's with the cheapest possible casket.

Uh 10 is when I say cheapest, I mean you ordered a pine box from the monks in Kentucky.

Crowder doesn't sell that.

You can buy a cheaper not pine box from Costco, interestingly enough.

You can buy your casket at Costco and they'll ship it and make it.

But uh, you know, what what Diane just said is to think more like 10.

More like 10.

Now listen, I I I'm not telling you, I mean, we don't make investments because they're cheap.

We we choose what we want, but I want you to hear that part of what's behind, I believe, the influx of cremation here in the United States has to do both with world contact and with economy.

That doesn't mean there's a right decision, it just means that there's choices.

What does the church teach?

Here's the bottom line: resurrection is miraculous.

That's the church's teaching.

Individual priests will tell you what they believe, but you won't find the answer to cremation in your prayer book because, quite honestly, the Episcopal Church isn't united in doctrine.

We're united in worship.

That's really important.

There is not a definitive doctrinal stance in the Episcopal Church regarding many things.

There are lots of options, and there are with your funeral as well.

Is that helpful to hear?

Um benefits, quite frankly, to cremation and about service.

This is important.

There's benefits either way.

So cremation, and we'll talk about um the other the other bit about the traditional burial.

A lot of times when somebody dies, and please, please, do not say somebody passed away.

That betrays our faith completely.

No one passes away.

The liturgy says life is not ended, it's changed.

We use euphemisms so much, quite honestly, that it makes it very difficult for us to grieve.

People die.

That's what they do.

Dying is not a bad thing.

God made us not out of iridium, but out of dirt.

Dirt goes back to being dirt.

If you need a euphemism, we pass into larger life.

You know, when you look at a saints' day, we don't celebrate when you're born.

We celebrate when you pass into larger life.

Martin Luther King's birthday is not a church holiday.

Uh, April the 4th is his feast day.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

That's when he passed into larger life.

Um that happens, if you've ever experienced this, quite honestly, the first several days, the first several weeks, even the first couple of months are full of logistics.

Like a death certificate and clearing your titles and calling social security.

Has anybody done this before?

There is so much to do that, quite honestly, you don't really have much time to think about how you feel.

One of the nice things about cremation is that you have time.

There's no rule that says you've got three days to do a funeral after somebody's cremated.

In in Southern California, and I'll tell you, I was in a Navy town in Coronado, so many people had Navy crypts.

There wasn't room to bury bodies.

Not if they wanted to be at the cemetery.

I didn't do a single, a single casket in three and a half years in Coronado.

Every single person was cremated.

One of the nice bits is that they had a month, six weeks.

They took how long they needed so that the service could be something in which they meaningfully commended their loved one to God.

By the same token, I have seen people scurry and do a coffin funeral within a couple of days, and it brought them a different kind of closure.

It's not like one was better than the other, but it's different.

You may be thinking, well, I don't need a funeral, I don't want one.

You're right, you don't need it.

The people who love you or even think about you do need it.

So please don't try to deny them something that they need.

It's very important that we have an opportunity to commend somebody that we love into God's hands.

Theologically, it already happened.

But we're sacramental, sacramental physical people, and we need physical things.

We need opportunities to say, God, here we go, we're gonna do this now.

So one of the benefits of cremation is time.

And time to do some of the mechanics while you do it.

Um back to the body a little bit.

Uh this is an important thing to think about.

Um I'm not quite sure the origin of the wake.

The wake, I think that's really like a like an Irish Catholic word, a wake.

Uh that happens in the south, really, I think, more than it happens in the north.

I'm just gonna be honest with you.

I I I'm suspicious it came so you could verify the person was actually dead, because you'd see them.

Um, and and I've had relatives and we had wakes for them.

Um I I had a family asked to do a wake here, and and they did it before the service.

Um, I personally will never have an open casket at a funeral, ever, never, because that is distracting from what we're here to do.

Now, a wake and a funeral are different things, right?

A wake or a viewing is where the mortician has tried to make you look as natural as possible.

You're dead, but they've tried to make you look, I don't want to talk you out of it.

I just am scratching my head because I'll tell you, my Aunt Margaret, who died three years ago, we had a wake for her, and and she looked really natural, except she looked dead, because she was dead.

Uh and nobody doubted she was dead.

Uh I mean, really, we we were pretty sure she was dead, but we we we we did this thing, and it wasn't just the economy of it.

I mean, because that that's an added expense, but it was this sort of weird thing.

You know what I'm talking about, where you go to one of these and say, look how natural they look.

Do they look natural to you?

No, I don't want to look at them.

I mean, you can't look natural.

You're dead.

You know, they say, oh, doesn't he just look like himself?

Looks like themselves.

I um, you know, I actually read a really long article about this that said we've actually really changed how we do this since World War II.

So many people died in World War II that we just couldn't confront death anymore.

We just couldn't, it was too painful.

So we've adopted some of these practices like dressing people up and all that business because it was too heavy.

But I don't really think that's our social reality any longer, if that makes sense.

And I think it's really helpful to think through really how it is that we can help people behind us grieve.

You can say, I don't want to be selfish or nobody cares.

And that's just nonsense.

We need to be helpful.

Now listen, your next of kin can do whatever they want to with you.

They can't.

You can make a funeral plan and have it notarized, and your next of kin can do whatever they want with you.

And in some ways, friends, that's not really bad because I meet people who come in and they say, Well, I think mom would really have wanted us to have communion.

Would you take it if we offered it?

Well, no, but I think mom would really want it.

Now listen, mom might want it, but the funeral is much, is as much, it's probably much more than the people who are behind and the people who have gone.

Does that make sense?

You may say, Mom would have really liked this hymn, The Church is one foundation.

I just did a funeral like this.

Mom wanted these two funerals.

I was the only one singing them.

And I said, listen, do the people coming, do they know the hymn?

Oh, yeah, yeah, they know they not a single person knew that hymn.

It was just me.

And listen, I I I don't really have like an Irish dinner solo voice.

So I caution people.

If if they're not want to sing, don't have hymns.

I mean, really.

This is one of the things important to think about.

I tell people now, just so you hear it, at a wedding.

Well, we think we want to have communion.

Okay, but one of you is Catholic and the other one of you is Baptist.

So is anyone gonna take it?

Well, probably not.

Then you probably want to do it at the rehearsal where your closest friends and family can do it, and you're not excluding your guests.

Because if they're not going to take it, and you know that, then you're doing something that's excluding people.

There's no right answer.

There's just thinking around this.

Does that does that make sense?

It isn't wrong to have communion for five people in front of a hundred.

It isn't wrong.

Is that what you want to do?

I mean, that that's that's the only question.

Right.

Isn't a motivator for getting what you want for your funeral to write into your will, you'll disinherit anybody who doesn't do what you want?

I mean, you could do that, but it depends who your executor is.

They still might do what they want anyway.

Yeah.

Please, if I say anything that spurs a question, because we have we really do have a lot of time and I want to make it.

Go ahead and go if you've got a question on this.

Okay.

So so those, I think, are your two choices.

Now, again, I've told you in a funeral, I don't think the casket should be open.

I believe that's distracting.

So while I'm the rector here, there will never be an open casket funeral.

There won't.

We have a giant pole that covers that.

We also have a little pole that covers ashes if you'd like to do that.

Right?

There is something really nice at the end of every funeral, towards the end, we say we commend somebody to the Lord, right?

And I believe that if one of those things is present, the priest should lay their hand on the remains.

I think that's a really powerful symbol.

So you may say, I don't want my cremains at my funeral.

Um symbolically, it's kind of not bad to do that.

It's really not bad because it it offers completeness.

Again, what I think the funeral does is it gives everybody behind a concrete opportunity to have some closure about giving you to God.

Now, my last parish, um, we had not just we didn't have a columnarium.

You've heard me say this before.

We had a memorial garden.

And um, in the memorial garden, before or after the service, there was a hole dug in the ground.

I'm not trying to be crass, but we dug it quite deep.

And um, there was no grave marker, uh, there was a plaque with who was where, and we knew in the office who was where, but family members had an opportunity to pour ashes into the ground.

Now you may say, I never want to do that.

I would tell you, it was so powerful for family members to have that moment of closure.

I sort of became convinced that it's a really nice opportunity to give folk.

Right?

Um, we do it differently here because we don't have that.

We have a columbarium, and not everybody has that anyway, but we do have a service of interment that we do before or after funerals, where if people are in the columbarium, they get to see or do put their spouse or their father or mother in the columbarium.

If they want to do that, they get to do that.

And again, I believe we're physical people and that our physicality is a good thing, and that doing physical things is necessary for us, like taking the Eucharist.

Which is why I want to encourage you, if you're thinking, I just want to be scattered somewhere.

Um I'd suggest that you have half of you scattered and the other half of you put somewhere so that people who want to have a place with you have a real place to go.

You may say, well, listen, if I'm scattered in the ocean, then anytime someone goes to the ocean, they'll think of me.

I I don't think our brains work that way.

I don't think so.

You could say, I'd like to be scattered on top of, you know, Mount Rainier, because I love that.

And people can come up to Mount Rainier and they'll know I'm all around.

You can do what you'd like, but if you're gonna scatter, I'm just telling you, people who scatter usually come back and say, I wish I had somewhere to go for mom.

I wish I had somewhere to go.

Um so this this is just anecdotal, no formula, but it's nice to have a place, a place that has some kind of marker where people can really recall memories of you.

Are there legal issues with um ashes in the ground?

This is a great question.

Um are there legal issues with scattering of any kind or burying?

The answer is of course not, because it's organic material.

Well, if we're cremated and buried at sea, and you have to go at least a mile on short.

I know if you ask, there are ramifications, but let me tell you what.

Most people don't ask, and they don't tell.

And honestly, not to be crass, is there a difference from emptying your fire pit and emptying a bag?

Now, my wife happens to do wastewater treatment quality.

She would tell you that if I pour my ashes anywhere at a point source that contributes to a water of the U.S., technically I'm in violation of the Clean Water Act.

No one is prosecuting that.

I have chickens in my yard, and when it rains, what they leave behind washes into the lake.

It's probably not really good.

If the industry did that, they would be in trouble as uh as a point source vector to a water of the U.S.

Um, but really nobody cares that my chickens' nitrogen goes into clear lake.

So uh I've had people tell me after the fact that they've scattered their loved ones' ashes on our playground.

I don't know where to find them.

Does it make sense what I'm telling you?

There there are technical rules.

There are technical rules if you pursue it.

So here at St.

Thomas, if we were going to make a plot in which you could scatter ashes, and we wanted to do it right, we would have to get a special use permit from the city.

Cost of$300.

They'd grant it to us, right?

And with that permit, then we would turn whatever that plot is into permanent cemetery space.

Which would mean you can never build on it, right?

And listen, that's fine.

If that's something we do down the road, that's what we would do.

But if you choose to come dig a hole at St.

Thomas, if you ask me, I'd say, well, you probably should have a permit, you know.

If you don't ask me, then you did.

I hope I'm not, you don't hear me saying the wrong thing.

What I'm telling you is you won't get a permit to go do this on top of Mount Rainier.

I don't think they'll give you that permit.

If you go do it, what are the legal ramifications?

Probably zero.

Who's going to enforce that?

I I don't know the answer.

How much does it cost to be put in the mausoleum?

How's that work?

Yeah, great question.

You used a really interesting word, by the way.

Mausoleum.

Um, you know that the mausoleum of Halicanarsus is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Did you all know this?

No.

Yeah, one of the seven wonders along with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the pyramids, right?

And the mausoleum had an interesting shape.

It had this interesting shape.

It was really kind of the first of its kind to be so grandiose.

And interestingly enough, it influenced a lot of other people building smaller versions of the mausoleum of Halicanarsis.

So if you've been to Absalom's tomb in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem, it's got the shape of the Mausoleum of Halicanarsis.

It's just on a much smaller scale.

That was the first of its kind, right?

You didn't want to hear that.

Um we we have this columbarium, and um you you're good.

We have this columbarium.

You know, it used to be in the church, and now it's been put in this chapel, uh, and the cost is a little bit variable.

It depends how many niches you'd like to possess.

So I I know these prices because I just looked at them.

I think a niche for a single is like$12.50.

And I think a double niche is$2050, and I think a triple niche, which is a strange thing, uh, is something like$2850.

Um this, along with other uh columbaria, it's interesting to know, have particular rules associated with them, which is that um it almost doesn't matter how big you were.

You could be 400 pound or you could be 40 pound.

When they're done with you in the crematorium, you're going to occupy roughly the same volume.

That's counterintuitive, but let me tell you, it's it's correct.

And um, in any of these columbaria, whether it's a military or here, all of the uh the permanent housing has spatial constrictions.

Uh they're not built around whatever container you bring, they're built around a particular container that usually you have to buy within the spatial restrictions or the place provides.

This is the kind of thing they don't tell you, so I hope it's okay that I'm telling you.

Like here, we have particular uh, I mean, you could open it with a saw, but they're the but they're like one-way sealing boxes.

So once the ashes go in, they're in a particular size, and it behooves you not to buy a special box unless you'd like to have that, because it won't go in there.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

It's this is a one-size box, and we have the box.

Um and that's true in the Navy too.

I mean, you you would want to ask.

Because a lot of times what a what what a funeral parlor will do is they'll sell you a lovely decorative box, you know, and and then it won't go in a column.

It won't.

Very rarely will your box that you bought at the funeral home go in a thing.

That's not so much possible.

So part of the cost is the box.

Absolutely.

And the other part of the cost is the engraving, right?

So we're now engraving in the granite.

Um you know, listen, I'm not a salesman, but when we did those prices three years ago, we moved it, we redid the contract to make sure it was right.

And it's, I mean, at St.

John the Divine, it's like$4,000.

I mean, so we we we it's still at the bottom.

I by the way, I'm not selling anything, but it's it's at the bottom.

Anybody bought funeral plots before?

Did they cost more than that?

I don't think we're yes.

I think they do.

Again, this isn't just about cost.

I don't want to sound like this is the way you whatever.

It but it but it does matter to to you the computation, I think.

My my family somehow has a family plot.

I I don't know if it's legal.

Uh it's like just they put like a fence around it, and there's some bodies in there, and it's I mean, it's like drifting into eastern Kentucky a little bit, so I I don't really know if they ever got a license.

That's where my mom and dad want to go, and that's what that's what they're gonna do.

Uh and and even though I don't like that idea much, that's what I'm gonna do, if that makes sense.

Because that's that's what they'd like.

I would be very disappointed if they put my body there.

Very disappointed.

Um, but I'd also be dead, so I don't know what will happen.

Carolyn, did I answer your question about boxes?

Yes.

And by the way, this is a really good thing, and this is part of what I want you to start thinking about.

I don't know that you really want your survivors to have to think where you'd like to go.

Now, no, they they'd probably make a good decision.

My wife doesn't actually really care, so I've made her funeral plan as well.

Well, that's just what I do.

Uh yeah, she doesn't care, but I do.

And there will be places I will want to, you know, there's be places I want to go, really, to and her family, I think, would like to have a place to go.

Um, I didn't know how they feel about cremation, but that's for both of us.

Just telling.

Again, it isn't better, it's just what we want to do.

Um, but do know that if you go into Columbarium, ask about the the size restrictions first.

This may be shifting back because I think that a couple of seconds or a minute, like what's the difference between a funeral and a memorial?

Yeah, nothing.

Except that we don't like the word funeral.

And there's lots of people who say celebration of life.

Do you know what it's called in the prayer book?

It's called burial one or burial two.

That's what it's called.

Communion's always an option.

Right.

And so I've been to something where everybody just got up and said things, and there wasn't really a blessing, or anything.

Great, and I'm gonna walk through that next after this question.

I don't know the answer to that because I'm not I'm not sure we have a permit for that.

I don't know that it's a cemetery as such.

Do you know?

Okay.

So if they sold the church, they would take the columbarium and put it in the church.

I I believe that's what the bishop would do with ours.

I I I don't know, I d we probably have a contract like that with the diocese.

Our columbarium is like we built this in 1994, I think.

And this columbarium came really soon after.

Um I probably should ask the diocese to if they've got our contract on file, just so we have it.

Yeah.

They they'd leave it somewhere else.

I can't imagine the diocese ever selling this property.

I mean, I really can't.

I can't either.

I'm sure it's happened.

Bishops who decide the property of the parishes.

It's happened where the bishop has sold property against the will of a growing mission.

There was just a trial by for the uh Bishop Diocesan of Los Angeles on this.

Uh he sold a property for$14 million against the will of the growing mission.

Um, and they took him to court.

I don't actually know the outcome of it.

Um okay, so Linda's question is about the service.

And here's what I want to tell you.

Regardless of who your people are, I'm very strong-willed.

And I'm gonna speak, I'm out of my own family as well, for my parents and for my wife.

My parents are uh fundamentalist Christian evangelicals, and and I love them.

I do, and I appreciate that our faith is very different and what their faith means and does for them.

And uh my mother has told me what she wants at her funeral, and I won't do it.

And I've told her that.

I'm not doing that.

And she says, it's what I want, and I'm not gonna do it.

What she wants at her funeral is an open microphone time for everybody to stand up and say what they want, and I won't do it, and you shouldn't do it either.

And here's why it gets in the way of what the liturgy does.

Now, there is one thing the Episcopal Church does better than anything else, and it's a burial.

It is our best liturgy because it's serious, it does not deny that the person is dead, it takes our faith seriously, which is that we believe that life is changed but not ended, and it's an opportunity to commend somebody to God, knowing that that commendation is bittersweet.

I have said, I probably shouldn't do too much self-disclosing, but that um if I'm not giving either the eulogy or homily at my dad's funeral, I don't know if I'm going.

Because I'm not going to listen to some preacher tell me who my dad was who didn't know him at all.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Everybody does this differently, but if you've been to a funeral with me, if I don't know you, I'm not telling a story on you.

Some people try to go and research so that they can do it.

That's not my job.

My job as liturgist is to talk about the theology of life changing and not ending.

My my job is not to describe a person I never met.

Does that make sense?

What I believe every funeral needs, and I need is the right word, every funeral needs one or two eulogies.

A eulogy, good word, is five to seven minutes long.

It is not longer.

Otherwise, it's no longer a good word.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

It becomes burdensome.

A good eulogy is five to seven minutes long, and it is about the person who died, not about the speaker.

The worst eulogies are what the dead person did for me.

I have been to many of those.

The worst eulogies are more than seven minutes long with that theme.

A good eulogy reminds us, or even informs us, who it is that we are commending to God, virtues, foibles, and all.

Good eulogies do not pretend somebody with St.

Peter without reminding us he sank in the water.

Do you know what I'm saying?

A good eulogy is one that includes, honestly, humor.

Like Dwight Judy was colorblind and he bought the wrong color car.

He insisted Carolyn was getting a blue car.

And he bought a brown one because he was sure it was blue.

He didn't ask anybody.

That's about Dwight Judy.

That's who we commended to God.

We didn't commend somebody else.

We commended that man to God, right?

That wasn't deprecating.

That's who Dwight was.

And that story was one of the more helpful stories because if you knew Dwight, or if you didn't, you just got to meet him.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Some people say, I didn't want someone to talk about me.

That's fine, but everyone else needs that.

Everyone needs that.

And then I think a good funeral has a homily.

And homily I use instead of sermon, a few minutes about what our faith reminds.

If you've been to a funeral here, you've pretty much heard the homily.

I'll give it your funeral if I do it.

It's pretty similar.

Because that's the essence of our faith.

Life isn't ended, it's changed.

The change is hard.

The change is hard.

But it's more than hard.

I think we need to hear that over and over and over again.

Not because we didn't get it the first time, but because we need to hear it for Jim Needler, and we need to hear it for me.

We need to hear it context specifically over and over and over again.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

If you don't do anything else but those two things, you're at the beginning of a good service.

Now, what we do really well here is if you read through the liturgy, we talk about the reality of death and the reality of life.

And a service does both of those things.

So I would put our liturgy against anyone I've ever encountered.

I don't mean the Episcopal Church is better than the Lutheran Church, just our funeral liturgy is better.

I believe that.

Communion or not is an option.

Hymns or not are an option.

Readings are optional, but I think you probably got the prayer book recommends these.

You can do any reading you'd like if the priest will bless it.

And I've been to some weddings or funerals, both, in which they ask for scriptures not on the list, or they asked for some frankly beautiful poems that meant something to the deceased.

I don't really have a problem with that myself.

Some priests do, but I don't.

Like I say, I think it's always helpful to discuss what it means to you so that we don't just hear it and move on, but so that it can be woven into the homily and the eulogy.

Does that make sense what I'm saying?

The rules are: if you want to have the Eucharist, you must have a gospel.

You have to.

That's non-negotiable.

If you don't want the Eucharist, you don't have to have a gospel.

And you don't really have to have any scripture readings, although I think it's a good idea.

Those are the service rules.

Questions, comments?

Linda had asked about what we needed, then she had to go teach godly play.

That's why I'm recording this.

What's the difference between a memorial and a funeral?

There shouldn't be any difference.

It should be like I told you, I think.

When do you have an open microphone?

Well, you don't really have an open microphone if you choose, you do that at a reception.

Right?

What you don't want in a service is an open microphone for lots of reasons.

Like people had no plan what they were going to say, and they're like, I should say something.

And they get up, and the something is like, oh, you couldn't.

I mean, I've really thought about asking people to sit down before.

I I don't do open microphones, but I thought about having eulogists sit down.

Because it's I mean, it's painful.

I mean, really, it's painful.

Anybody heard a bad eulogy before?

I I really want to see a show of hands.

Anyone been to a funeral before?

It should be the same hands.

Don't let the fact that it's been done wrong turn you from doing it.

Again, this is my number one counsel to a family.

Do a eulogy.

A eulogy is not an obituary.

It's not.

Obituar is up to you, right?

You should know that because of what's happening with print media, obituaries is where, frankly, newspapers make their money.

Obituaries and ad sales, which are plummeting, right?

So if you want your obituary in the chronicle, I think it's like a thousand dollars.

And that's if it's quite short.

If you build on that, it's more.

Now listen, I'm not saying it's a waste of money.

I'm not saying that.

You just need to know this is the world we're living in, right?

An obituary tells you the facts of somebody.

When they were born, who's their survivors, where they went to school, what career they had, that sort of business.

Right?

It's a fact pattern.

It's like a case in the legal record.

An obituary is not a eulogy.

At some of the better funerals I've been to, the obituary has been read as eulogy one.

Eulogy two was a eulogy and not an obituary.

Does that make sense?

One of the nice things about having grown up in, I mean, a priesthood in Navy Town, USA, is that some of those Navy people were really like historically important people, like Rear Admiral Ed Martin, a three-star who spent seven years at the Hanoi Hilton with John McCain.

Six hundred people arrived to grieve Rear Admiral Ed Martin.

The church sat 250.

So they were people in the parish hall and they were people in the courtyard.

We knew that was going to happen.

I suspect, and you know, I hope I'm not saying anything bad because this will happen.

One day Charlie Bolden will die.

If he were to have his funeral here, I'm suspicious it would be a very large funeral.

Does it make sense what I'm saying?

In a case like that, an obituary was actually a nice way to lead.

It gave us the fact pattern, but then it was critical to hear, beyond the facts, who the person was.

A funeral is not a place where we only tell the good things, because that isn't real, you know.

The thing you need to know is we all have cracks.

It's how the light gets in, and it's how the light gets out.

I have really strong, cracked memories of my dad that I think are really important to knowing him.

Because regardless if it sounds like a bad thing, it's him.

Boy, whoever gets to do me, they are gonna have a great time with this.

The cracks are important, the idiosyncrasies are important because they remind us of who it is we are giving to God.

So you you you really gotta have both.

Don't pick between an obituary and a eulogy.

Omit the obituary, do the eulogy.

If you need to do both, do both.

This is my advice.

Does it does it make sense?

I gave a eulogy for my friend Tony when he passed away.

And it was interesting that there were three.

The bishop gave one.

But in every one, they used the word snarky because that's who he was.

Yeah, you know.

Um so it was it was funny things and it was wonderful things, and it was just his foibles about who he was.

Yeah.

And that's exactly right.

The honestly, the best eulogies I've ever heard were both here.

Morella Beyer wrote one of the top, along with the rest of Jim Needler's children.

That was probably one of the better funerals I've ever been at.

Jim Needler's service was incredible.

If you were there, I don't know if you remember it, but but I do.

They told you exactly who Jim Needler was.

Now, listen, Jim's children wrote that eulogy and they could not read it.

They could not.

So we did.

They wrote it, we read it.

Meaning his friends, who were the vergers, took turns reading that eulogy, and it was it was Jim.

It was it was brilliant, it was amazing.

Dwight Judy's funeral had two of the better eulogies I've ever heard.

The kids wrote them and they delivered them with poise and they described their dad to a T, and they were sad.

And they described memories of their dad.

I didn't know Dwight.

I'd met him twice.

I really met him at his funeral, and that's why they were good.

Does it make sense what I'm saying?

Some people say you should write your own obituary.

I mean, maybe.

Uh I think this is the kind of thing that I grew up.

I I'm really, really slow to tell you this because the church I grew up in would emphasize how we should write our own obituary so that we would like repent and change our lives, you know.

Like we would be face to face with all of this stuff we hadn't done in our lives, and so I really have a hard time thinking about that.

I mean, again, your obituary is just the fact pattern of your life.

I have two parents and a brother.

I've got two children and a wife.

I went to college and got a Bachelor of Science degree, and then I went to seminary.

I worked in a couple of places.

That's my obituary.

You could read that and not know me at all.

And that's why you need a eulogy.

I don't want to beat the I I probably beat that to death, but that that's that's what I think.

Other other questions.

You may think he's got to be done.

How are we gonna do this again?

Well, there's a lot more to think about.

A lot more to think about because it's not just about the service, it's not just about that.

It's not just about where you would like to be or where your spouse would like to put you.

It's not just about what record sort of you're going to leave behind.

There's a whole lot of other things we usually don't think about, honestly, until it's a bit late.

Now, I'm not I'm not a lawyer, but I've dabbled in this stuff enough.

So here's some of the things we're going to talk about next time.

And if you have questions or comments, bring those as well.

But we're going to talk about things like um I forget the right word for this.

Um advanced medical directives.

I think that's what we call it now.

Anyone have advanced medical directives?

I we have them, and this is a good thing about Texas as opposed to other states.

I don't know if Georgia's changed.

Last time I lived in Georgia, you could have an advanced medical directive, and your next of kin could do whatever they wanted.

You could put in your chart, do not resuscitate, and your next of kin could say, strike that out.

And guess whose will prevailed?

Theirs, not yours.

Now, Texas shouldn't work that way.

Should not.

Which is why you need an advanced medical directive.

Because if you don't have one, guess who picks?

Your next of kin.

Which is gonna be your spouse, or your children, or your your your parents if they're still around, or your Uncle Bob.

You know, I mean, whoever is still around, they parse down through that.

It's important that you have one, I think, and that it's specific.

We'll return to this next time, but sort of my last thing is um, and again, I'm idiosyncratic.

This will show up at my funeral, I'm sure.

Um, but you know, you've got like a 20% chance of losing at Russian roulette.

20% chance you lose, right?

Uh my directive says if I don't have an 80% chance of making it with one of those interventions, not to do it.

It says that.

You can pick that, what you put in.

You don't say, I don't want to be put on machines like you know, an iron lung or a thing, unless it's gonna be helpful.

Helpful according to whom.

Once upon a time, I took a dog to the vet and they told me he needed to have this operation and it was gonna turn out fine.

Boy, it was expensive.

And I had two kids and I was living in Southern California, which is expensive.

And I thought, well, okay, the vet says it's gonna work, so okay, I'll I'll do the investment.

It didn't work.

I went back to the vet and they said, Well, yeah, you know, it was like a 50-50 chance.

I'm not a gambler.

50-50 is not great odds.

I absolutely would not have done that intervention.

They told me it was gonna work.

Gonna work means 80 or 90 or 100%, not 50, right?

I'd like to up the odds.

I mean, I've I used to teach probability.

I know what 50% means, right?

You can do that or not, right?

You can do that or not.

We'll talk about that next time.

More of the things you can do, more of those up there preparations, and we'll return to any questions you have about your service.

But I but I want you to hear more than anything.

The person you who who survives you, whether they're your spouse or your children or your parents or your nieces and nephews, please give them some guidance for what you would have liked.

Doesn't mean you need to have bought everything in advance.

A lot of people do that.

I think it's a lovely idea.

I do.

Um didn't mean you got to do that, but please give them a map.

My wife knows me better than anybody else.

And again, she would have no idea what to do with me.

What scriptures I'd want, what kind of service, who should be doing the homily.

She'd have no idea.

She doesn't know for herself.

Which is why, you know, again, that's what I do in the relationship.

I've got to kind of figure that out.

And I and I and I think it's holy work, is why I commend it to you.

So I'll see you next week.

Um, if you have questions, comments, feel free to email me or or uh with them, and I'll make sure I cover them next week.