Reminding ourselves that we die but life goes on, taking time to mourn those we have lost, and surrounding survivors with love can do all of us a world of good.
One of the things I have learned as an American Christian from people of other faiths and other lands is to allow time to say farewell to loved ones who die, to mourn them, and to reflect on their lives. Churches once were surrounded by graveyards (which we used to call churchyards), but over the centuries we have separated the living and the dead. When someone at First United Methodist Church in Amityville, NY proposed a few years ago that the congregation create a columbarium (niches for funeral urns to be stored) in their building, some members were shocked.
Back in the early 1960s, Harris United Methodist Church, a predominantly Japanese-American congregation in Honolulu, built a new sanctuary. Some members of the congregation, particularly Nissei (second generation Americans) and first-generation Christians, wanted a space where they worshiped for the ashes of parents. Their culture asked eldest sons to guard these ashes.
Hawaii was still a Methodist mission district, so the construction plans needed approval by church bureaucrats in Manhattan. Some mission executives objected that this smacked of ancestor worship–until one of them pointed out he had seen crypts and columbaria in churches in Europe, and nearly every sanctuary there was surrounded by a graveyard. Harris got their new building in 1962, with 54 niches for ashes. There is something healthy, I suspect, in reminding ourselves of death as we enjoy life.
It is also good for us, I believe, to gather regularly as we move through seasons of grief, surrounding the bereaved with love, not just for a day, but for weeks and months. American Christians tend to hurry back to our normal routines after the funeral or memorial service, but Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and other experts on death and dying have insisted that it takes time to work through the loss of those we love.
When I was a young pastor in Hawaii, the father of a parishioner died. Harold said somewhat apologetically that he would follow the customs of his parents’ Tenrikyo Church, a Japanese “New Religion” that grew out of Shinto, adding elements of Christianity and Buddhism. I attended the funeral to support him and was fascinated by Tenrikyo’s mourning ritual: church members gather with the bereaved ten days after the funeral, then at ten weeks, ten months, and ten years.
When a Jewish friend died a few years ago, I visited his widow as she “sat shiva.” Shiva is a seven-day mourning period in which the spouse, child, parent or sibling of the deceased stays home and is surrounded by condolences, support, and food brought by friends and family. Hans Gustafson, a theologian at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, was so drawn to this custom that his family did something similar when his mother died, even though they were Christian. His father, his brother, and all the children and grandchildren gathered for a week in her home and invited friends and family to visit them there—who came in droves. The episode is mentioned in his book titled Learning from Other Religious Traditions: Leaving Room for Holy Envy.
Jews traditionally end shiva by walking around the block, entering shloshim, a month of returning to daily life without festivities or entertainment, affirming that life goes on but it takes time to grieve. During shloshim, the mourners’ prayer Kaddish (which praises God without mentioning death) is said morning and evening—and for another year when you lose your parents.
Coptic Christians, I have learned recently, visit the family of the deceased for three days after a death, then relatives visit for forty days, and finally there is often a special mourning service at the end of this period. We can all learn from customs such as these to give ourselves time to mourn, to comfort the bereaved for weeks, rather than a few hours.
Many faith communities embody this wisdom in their mourning rituals. Hindus, for example, often observe thirteen days of mourning rituals, those on the thirteenth day being the most important. The anniversary of a loved one’s death is often observed by Hindus in a temple.
Jews gather on the Yahrzeit, the anniversary of a loss, not unveiling a memorial stone until then. It takes a year, I find, to complete the first cycle of grieving a loved one: the first birthday for which they are no longer present, the first holidays in which they are absent from the table, etc.
Reminding ourselves that we die but life goes on, taking time to mourn those we have lost, and surrounding survivors with love can do all of us a world of good.
