Reimagining Death

Reimagining Death
Author: Lucinda Herring
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1623172934

Honor your loved ones and the earth by choosing practical, spiritual, and eco-friendly after-death care Natural, legal, and innovative after-death care options are transforming the paradigm of the existing funeral industry, helping families and communities recover their instinctive capacity to care for a loved one after death and do so in creative and healing ways. Reimagining Death offers stories and guidance for home funeral vigils, advance after-death care directives, green burials, and conscious dying. When we bring art and beauty, meaningful ritual, and joy to ease our loss and sorrow, we are greening the gateway of death and returning home to ourselves, to the wisdom of our bodies, and to the earth.

The Natural Burial Cemetery Guide

The Natural Burial Cemetery Guide
Author: Ann Hoffner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2017
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780989594608

A guidebook for over 125 US cemeteries that offer green burial. Includes introductory material on green burial and photo illustrations. Detailed cemetery entries are color coded and grouped by region and state. 303 pages.

Common Worship: Times and Seasons President's Edition

Common Worship: Times and Seasons President's Edition
Author: Common Worship
Publisher: Canterbury Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2013-07-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0715122436

This revised, expanded edition of the Common Worship President’s Edition contains everything to celebrate Holy Communion Order One throughout the church year. It combines relevant material from the original President’s Edition with Eucharistic material from Times and Seasons, Festivals and Pastoral Services, and the Additional Collects.

The Funeral of Mr. Wang

The Funeral of Mr. Wang
Author: Andrew B. Kipnis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2021-07-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520381971

The funeral of Mr. Wang -- Of transitions and transformations -- Of space and place : Separation and distinction in the homes of the dead -- Of strangers and kin : moral family and ghastly strangers in urban sociality -- Of gifts and commodities : Spending on the dead while providing for the living -- Of rules and regulations : governing mourning -- Of souls and spirits : secularization and its limits -- Of dreams and memories : a ghost story from a land where haunting is banned -- Epilogue.

Grave Matters

Grave Matters
Author: Mark Harris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2007-01-16
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0743299280

By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling. Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor. Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral, one that delivers a loved one to the crematory, and another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin. In the morbidly fascinating tradition of Stiff, Grave Matters details the embalming process and the environmental aftermath of the standard funeral. Harris also traces the history of burial in America, from frontier cemeteries to the billion-dollar business it is today, reporting on real families who opted for more simple, natural returns. For readers who want to follow the examples of these families and, literally, give back from the grave, appendices detail everything you need to know, from exact costs and laws to natural burial providers and their contact information.

The Good Funeral

The Good Funeral
Author: Thomas G. Long
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 066423853X

"Before long I began to understand that showing up, being there, helping in an otherwise helpless situation was made heroic by the same gravity I had sensed when I first stood in that embalming room as a boy„the presence of the dead made the presence of the living more meaningful somehow, as if it involved a basic and intuitively human duty to witness." „from Chapter 1, "How We Come to Be the Ones We Are" Two of the most authoritative voices on the funeral industry come together here in one volume to discuss the current state of the funeral. Through their different lenses„one as a preacher and one as a funeral director„Thomas G. Long and Thomas Lynch alternately discuss several challenges facing "the good funeral," including the commercial aspects that have led many to be suspicious of funeral directors, the sometimes tense relationship between pastors and funeral directors, the tendency of modern funerals to exclude the body from the service, and the rapid growth in cremation. The book features forewords from Patrick Lynch, President of the National Funeral Directors Association, and Barbara Brown Taylor, highly praised author and preacher. It is an essential resource for funeral directors, morticians, and pastors, and anyone else with an interest in current funeral practices.

Final Rights

Final Rights
Author: Joshua Slocum
Publisher: Square One Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 771
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0942679350

Josh Slocum and Lisa Carlson are the two most prominent advocates of consumer rights in dealing with the death industry. Here they combine efforts to inform consumers of their rights and propose long-needed reforms. Slocum is executive director of Funeral Consumers Alliance, a national nonprofit with over 90 local affiliates nationwide. Carlson is executive director of Funeral Ethics Organization, which works with the industry to try to improve ethical standards. In addition to nationwide issues, the book covers state-by-state information needed by anybody who wishes to take charge of funeral arrangements for a loved one, with or without the help of a funeral director. More information about the book and related issues can be found at www.finalrights.org .

Confessions of a Funeral Director

Confessions of a Funeral Director
Author: Caleb Wilde
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-09-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0062465260

“Wise, vulnerable, and surprisingly relatable . . . funny in all the right places and enormously helpful throughout. It will change how you think about death.” —Rachel Held Evans, New York Times–bestselling author of Searching for Sunday We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and—when it can be avoided no longer—letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference—in other people’s lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed the family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial; the nursing home that honored a woman’s life by standing in procession as her body was taken away; the funeral that united a conflicted community. Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde’s candid memoir offers an intimate look into the business of death and a new perspective on living and dying. “Open[s] up conversations about life’s ultimate concerns.” —The Washington Post “As a look behind the closed doors of the death industry, as well as a candid exploration of Wilde’s own faith journey, this book is fascinating and compelling.” —National Catholic Reporter “[A] stunner of a debut.” —Rachel Held Evans, author of Inspired

Traditions of Death and Burial

Traditions of Death and Burial
Author: Helen Frisby
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2019-09-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1784423807

Death has been a source of grief and uncertainty for humanity throughout history, but it has also been the inspiration for a plethora of fascinating traditions. The covering of mirrors to prevent the departed spirit from seeing itself; the passing bell rung to assist the soul to heaven; the 'sin eater' who sat beside a coffin eating and drinking to 'absorb' the corpse's sins – all of these were common approaches at one time or another. Yet in the modern day, death has become more clinical than spiritual, something kept hidden behind closed doors. This beautifully illustrated history explores English approaches to death and burial from the medieval era to the present day, exploring ancient customs which have long since lapsed, those such as lighting candles that have survived until the present day, and new approaches such as eco-burials, which are changing how we relate to death, dying and the dead.