The fun in funerals and the bittersweet

I've attended a number of funerals in the last few years as a support to mourners. Mostly the deceased have been students, most young people in their 20s. A number of them have been non-religious ceremonies. And I've also been to a number of funerals for other people too. One of the strands running through many of all of the above has been a declared desire to celebrate the life of the person who has died. In fact, thinking about it, when I was reasonably regularly conducting funerals myself, this was a refrain I was increasingly hearing as I spoke with the bereaved next of kin and friends.

The BBC have recently run an article on this growing phenomenon in which we can read:

 Instead of looking ahead to the afterlife, British funerals increasingly rejoice in memories of the deceased's triumphs, relationships and their favourite songs. There's a phrase for ceremonies like this - "a celebration of life" Happy funerals: A celebration of life? - BBC News

The manifestations of this desire can show up in a variety of ways, but my experience would note requests from the family of the deceased for people attending the event to wear bright colours or particular forms of clothing that were in some way meaningful to the person who has died. Also what was said in the ceremony would highlight the fun and good times. This makes more sense in the increasingly commonly articulated idea that the only afterlife that can be guaranteed or made sense of by many is 'living on in our memories'. In that scenario, one wants happy and positive memories to be a host to!
There's a lot to affirm in this but there are a couple of concerns that a responsible ceremony-leader should probably be balancing in the planning of the occasions.
To be affirmed is the recognition of the value of human relations and of memory: that each of us is because of the others in and around our lives and that the things we can celebrate about those we have loved are the very stuff of growing and worthwhile relationships (in general terms, at least, occasionally I do wonder). To be affirmed (though I suspect this is not really what is intended by those wanting celebrations of life) is the bittersweetness of such recollections. In the fond recollection there is an awareness that this has come to an end and this produces a feeling of Sehensucht. And I think that is probably a good thing at a funeral.

"Instead of looking to an afterlife" is an interesting counterpoise. I take it that it is meant as a characterisation of a traditional religious funeral. And I certainly gained the impression in comments about funerals as celebrations of life, that one of the things that people were trying to get away from is feeling that they could only really participate if they had some kind of belief in the afterlife and/or God. The two don't necessarily go together, of course: some people believe in some kind of God without an afterlife and some consider an afterlife perfectly possible but not really God. What we should take from that is that it is not necessarily the case any more that the concern uppermost in mourners' minds about the fate of the deceased after death and doing something for them to make things better or at least not to get in the way of their post-mortem happiness. Denial or agnosticism about life after life therefore shifts the horizon of the ceremony in most people's understandings. Now it has to be about the way that those who are left carry on and a big part of that is how they remember the deceased.
Never mind that most CofE funerals have, for a good while, included concern for the bereaved and incorporated some kind of eulogy; clearly the God/afterlife themes have a stronger cultural hold associated with the church funeral hanging on in the popular imagination than the frequent realities of the actual experiences of the funerals.
This leads into my concerns. A bit further on in the article, we read: "despite being being the great leveller, death is increasingly seen as an occasion to express one's individuality." That can work quite well with the celebration of life and may have played a part in strengthening the idea: what one wishes for oneself, is projected onto the funerals of others (and that in turn becomes a template for still others). I don't have a problem with that except in one respect. Sometimes the wishes of the deceased may not be appropriate for the needs of the mourners. As one of those interviewed puts it...

He doesn't want any tears. The purpose is not to dwell on loss, he says, but to rejoice in what happened when he was alive: "I don't want them mourning - I want them laughing."

But, I want to say, it's not just about what you want. In any case, you will either be completely absent, or at least in a position, I would hope, to appreciate better the needs of those left behind. They may need to grieve and the ceremony probably should be an occasion when something of that can be expressed in solidarity with other mourners. This gives permission for it to be done. In actual fact, it is an honour to the deceased that their impact has been such that they will be missed. Tears are appropriate. That's not to say that laughter is out of place and I think that there is a rightful reaction against funerals being only about grief.
You see, I think it is important that the positive place a funeral can have in the bereavement process is recognised. For it to do that, it should normally help the bereaved to face their loss, at least in the initial or early phases. To do this in community with others is part of what a funeral offers by way of benefits. Bereavement also involves recognising and beginning to renarrate ones own stories in relation to the person who has died; to make meaning out of the event of the death by situating or re-situating in the stories which carry most meaning for us. This is a time for bittersweet and for Sehensucht, and something of that should normally be part of the funereal proceedings; after all, any remembering has to entail some recollection at some level that a sad event involving the one remembered has taken place. This has been where, traditionally, relating to the big story of God and human destiny has come in.
So, it seems to me, that remembering something of the significance and the abundance of the life of one who has died is important. To give hospitality to laughter and tears is likely to be part of that. In some cases the laughter is part of the ceremony, in others, part of the informal eating and drinking afterwards.

And we remember. And it is true that remembering is a kind of afterlife for the one remembered. We do all belong to one another in the memories and stories we share; we don't just exist in our own heads but in the minds and memories of those we love and who love us (as we are reminded in 'I am a Strange Loop' by Douglas Hofstadter). Keeping the memory alive, in this sense, is a kind of maintaining the remaining life of the deceased.
As a Christian, I want to affirm that and gently suggest that there is One Who Remembers more fully, intimately with greater love and more realism than any of us. Remembers each and every one of us. Eternally. And as creator is able to give life to that remembering in a way that far exceeds the lingering but fading recollections of us humans. Giving a fullness of life and a perfecting of life. Dipping that lively remembrance in glory and setting it in a web of recollection of the best and of fulness and completion. We call this New Creation. Do we dare speak of this hope?

Infamy! Infamy! He's got it in f'me!

Just recently, I came across a blog post in which the first comment mentions my name. Unfortunately it was from a couple of years ago and comments now seem closed, so I can't get the misrepresentation off my mind by responding there.

The writer of the post (James F McGrath) appears to mention me incidentally because he'd found a link on this blog which was interesting to him -not so much my post itself, but the article I was pointing to. The point of mentioning me in the comment, however, seems to be to lessen the force of comment-writer Steven Carr's counter-point by making out (the guilt-by-association rhetorical device or as some know it a 'logical fallacy') that McGrath's relying on a shonky source. Of course, James was merely drawing from the source I was drawing attention to and so I was actually almost entirely irrelevant to the argument as James wasn't really using my point at all but something from the article (a point one of the other commenters also missed, because he quotes the article and attributes it to me).

So I confess to feeling a little aggrieved that Steven Carr has misrepresented me merely to do little more than to set 'me' up as a straw man to rhetorically undermine argument he actually wants to attack.

So here's what Steven says:

I’ve met Andii Bowsher in person, and he was totally unable to defend
the Jesus of the Gospels, and was reduced to claiming I was not
qualified to speak because I did not have a degree in X, Y and Z (Only
sceptics with degrees in every single subject related to Biblical
studies are allowed to have an opinion….)   See first comment on this post: Sandy Hook and Jesus Mythicisms

If this is the person I think it might be (whom I have hardly thought about in over 17 years!) then it is at least true that he has met me.

However, if memory serves me well enough, Steven mistook my reluctance to 'get involved in a land ware in Asia' for ignorance or inability. The truth is, as I saw it, that I realised I was dealing with someone who had far more time on his hands than I did (at the time I was a very busy vicar and also studying Cultural Studies part-time as well as trying to run a fairly big church) and seemed to me running a one man mission to convert the world to atheism.  I took stock and reckoned that I would find it hard to do the research and revision in a timely fashion. It was also becoming evident that Steven really wasn't interested in anything much more than the argument itself and building up his online reputation as an atheist attack dog. On the personal front, it seemed to me that the investment of time in dealing with his questions would mean other important matters would suffer.(and I noted, on his site that there were one or two Christian interlocutors who seemed to be giving a good account of themselves, saying the kinds of things I would probably want to say, so I'd be superfluous).

Some background: Steven, if I'm recalling aright, came to one of our first Alpha courses. It quickly became evident that he was a reasonably well-read and convinced atheist and was, it seemed, hoping that an Alpha course would be a great place to play debates. I probably had two or three brief verbal conversations with him and some interaction on line. He was wanting to engage me (and others) in quite detailed debate about the documentary history of NT writings and related matters. I told him that I was not able there and then to answer all of those questions. I recall thinking that this was the domain of a fairly specialised NT textual scholar and that I would need to spend a deal of time mugging up on those things in order to get up to speed. I knew roughly what territory we would be in and where to go to find more details, but since my active interests were not in NT textual matters I couldn't call to mind enough detail to have the discussion precisely at that point. I didn't, as they say, have those facts and arguments at my fingertips. I credited Steven with enough astuteness to have realised that this might have been the issue and perhaps to have seen behind my hedging. A charitable debater does such things. I now question that assumption and realise that Steven's self-proclaimed charitableness or generosity in debate was aspiration more than event.

As he was asking questions about matters for which there is a lot of literature, I tried to suggest that it would be better to look at that stuff in detail that way: what would my role be, if you can look at those arguments in detail? I suspect though, that he was also (and judging by the comments of the post in question) is still more interested in proving Christians wrong than in a more dispassionate conversation (which was how he first presented himself). James McGrath's comment following Steven's seems to indicate that this is not just my perception and that Steven may not have particularly moved on in this respect.

So "totally unable" is not really true. Not able to recall details of an area I didn't and don't specialise in without going back to books, articles etc: that would be true. But able in the longer term, probably. I could have picked up the salient points, facts etc again and added to what I had once been more familiar with.  Given the real choice between coming up with the raw material for Steven to have a fun argument and helping bereaved families with their funeral arrangements, helping my church to worship, grow and develop and doing the academic work that I was already committed to ... I chose the latter bunch of things. I still think that was reasonable. And I still think that the level of Steven's questions indicated that he'd have been better to do a module or two at Leeds University in Biblical literature -if he were serious about it. An Alpha course has to operate at a more popular level, and I said that, in not so few words, at the time.

"...defend the Jesus of the Gospels" -I'm not even sure that this is what we were talking about: he was attempting to engage me on textual history and interpretation of fragmentary evidence. And as it appears to my memory now, we scarcely got onto the issues of epistemology in relation to historical documents which would have been the necessary philosophical correlate. My recollection is that Steven really had quite a positivist approach to interpreting evidence and a tendency to over-simplify complex issues into not very helpful binary choices.A trait which also wearied me in the prospect of engagement.

That explains, to some degree, my frustration that when one of  our few online interactions strayed onto a matter, I seem to recall, about writings of early church 'fathers' and he seemed unable to comprehend that in a writing system without quotation marks or footnotes and without a developed scholarly system of attribution, people just relied on the reader to pick up the quote because the reader would be assumed to have either committed it to memory themselves or would find it sounded familiar. Hence these post apostolic writers do quote and allude extensively to the documents we now call the New Testament -but not in a way that would pass without adverse comment nowadays by university markers and moderators. I was frustrated because he didn't seem to get it that without having some experience and knowledge of how language and literature works and some appreciation of how the cultural artefacts and assumptions of the people at the time worked, you are likely to end up not appreciating what evidence there actually is.

I think that he wanted for early datable church writers not to be quoting gospels and epistles because that would mean the latter were earlier than he was comfortable with. Yet it seemed to me that it was quite correct that those things were being quoted (though obviously without quotation marks or footnotes, -that would be anachronistic), the matches of phrasing and choices of vocabulary items are just so. And, having been in situations to observe 'live' quoting of sources interwoven into argument and sermons where the communicator is assuming that their allusions will be picked up by the reasonably "well-versed", then it is easy to see how those quotes actually were there.
He seemed to want a simpler answer than that. I gave up when he characterised this as arguing that 'because he didn't have  a degree in ...' was it linguistics? Literature? '... that Jesus existed' (or some similar exaggerated pseudo choice). That's when it became apparent to me that this was a full time job in the making: just arguing with him.

I think that's what he's interpreted as my telling him that he "was not
qualified to speak because [he] did not have a degree in X, Y and Z". When what I was trying to convey is that if he himself didn't have the background to see what was obvious to others who did see those things, then perhaps he should be a little more curious about what they were able to see and to at least try to get to a point where he could begin to 'get it'. (And then critique it by all means, but you have to understand the issues properly first).

By that point I could tell we were both becoming ratty about it and so I withdrew to the work I was being paid to do, so to speak.

What a shame that something like 18 years after the event he should have retained such an animus about it that he drags my name into it (unnecessarily in terms of his argument since he agrees the article is useful; somewhat contradicting his rhetorical point). 18 years in which we might both have developed further and maybe differently from that brief and under-comprehending encounter -18 years is a lot of time to read and think more. Yes, I'm a bit miffed to discover that comment.
Steven, time to let it go. Personally, until I saw that comment, I couldn't have even recalled your name.

Note to self: It's at least an interesting study in how the same events can get quite different reporting. Which may be, ironically, rather to the point of the post he was commenting on.