Sergius Bulgakov's Sophiology of Death

It is cheering to see how much fresh and increasingly widespread attention Sergius Bulgakov has gained today. In the twenty years I have been moving in Eastern Christian scholarly circles, he has gone from being moderately well-known to arguably the most discussed Orthodox theologian today. Young scholars and old alike gathered just last week in Switzerland for a major conference devoted to his thought.

One such young scholar has given us a translation of a collection of the great man's essays: Sergius Bulgakov, The Sophiology of Death: Essays on Eschatology: Personal, Political, Universal, trans. Roberto J. De La Noval (Cascade Books, 2021), 193pp. 

No less a figure than David Bentley Hart has written a foreword to this book, whose translator I am hoping to interview on this blog once my review copy of the book shows up from Cascade. About this book that same publisher tells us this: 

What will be the final destiny of the human race at God's eschatological judgment? Will all be saved, or only a few? How does Christian eschatology impact Christian political action in the here and now? And what is the destiny of each individual facing the prospect of earthly death? In these essays, Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) brings the resources of Scripture and tradition to bear on these vital questions, arguing for the magnificent final restoration of all creatures to union with God in a universal salvation worthy of the infinite scope of Christ's redemption. Bulgakov also provides insight into how Christians can strive to bring God's kingdom to earth in anticipation of the peace and justice of the heavenly Jerusalem. The reader will also find in these pages profound theological reflections on the nature of human death and Christ's accompaniment of all humans in their dying, based on Bulgakov's own near-death experience. Together, these essays shed new light on eschatology in all its facets: personal, political, and universal.

Killing the Inconvenient and Inefficient

In the mid- and late-1990s, I was a volunteer in the pastoral care department of a large nursing home and was saddened by the neglect of many people there who were simply warehoused away pending their expiration date, which their families certainly found inconveniently far off into the future. And several of the residents themselves, bored, lonely, and often in declining health, felt the pressure to do the decent thing by hurrying along to their graves. The experience of visiting the residents, and sometimes bringing them the Eucharist, bestowed on my far more gifts than anything my poor efforts might have given them in return.

It was during this time that debates in Canada over euthanasia began to emerge, and it was smack in the middle of all that that Pope John Paul II rightly raised his finger in his powerful and still entirely relevant encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Some wrote that off as the "abortion letter" but its critique of the idol and ideology of "efficiency," developed at some length in several parts of the letter, admits of very wide application today, including how we handle the questions of human disease, decline, and death.

As I was reading the late pope's letter, I was also smack in the middle of my Hauerwas period, where I read every one of his books then extant, and even had whole sections memorized. He was hugely influential for my development, and became, unexpectedly, a friend when I wrote to him about my difficulties defending my MA thesis, which was heavily indebted to him and Alasdair MacIntyre. Hauerwas has written a powerful foreword to the new book Euthanasia and the Patristic Tradition by Ioannis Bekos (James Clarke & Co., 2019), 284pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Euthanasia and Patristic Tradition presents secular and Christian bioethics as opposing forces in dialogue, highlights the importance of the Christian Patristic tradition in revealing disguised characteristics of bioethics in our era, and challenges the idea of individualism in modern societies through the development of a Christian individualism. While the book is focused on euthanasia, it also offers important perspectives on other ethical dilemmas. Ioannis Bekos applies Panagiotis Kondyliss theory for the emergence of worldviews as a function of power where all ethical theories have been proved to be subjective. Bringing together bioethical theories and just war theory, he exposes the disguised power claims of modern bioethics over human existence. Then, through an account of the history of thought, society, and politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Bekos delivers a profound critique of the idea of common morality, popular theories such as principlism and contractualism, ethicists like Peter Singer, and philosophers like Habermas. Using the works of St John Damascene and St Symeon the New Theologian, Bekos shows the fundamental elements of a Christian anthropology regarding the constitution of man, the character of pain and death, and the importance of the free will in man, offering a critique of modern bioethics.

More Gifts from Madonna House

Twice in as many weeks the lovely people of Madonna House have gifted me with books. I noted here receiving a copy of a biography of their founder. Now in the mail Fr Bob Wild has sent me copies of two of his recent books: first, A Catholic Reading Guide to Universalism,treating mostly contemporary Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox sources. Published in 2015 by Resource Publications, the book clocks in at 194pp. About it the publisher tells us this:

This reading guide to some of the philosophical and theological literature on universalism offers practical help in providing informed material on a topic that is often treated in a superficial and unenlightened manner. The reader may be surprised to learn that universalism was the predominant belief in the early centuries, and that it has always been present in the Christian tradition. Spurred on by von Balthasar's book, Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? Robert Wild's guide provides current studies that support Von Balthasar's arguments that universalism is a legitimate hope for the Christian.

The second book, released a year later, treats of a related theme: A Catholic Reading Guide to Conditional Immortality: The Third Alternative to Hell and Universalism (Resource Publications), 218pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Like many other people, the long tradition about hell has been a source of serious confusion and distress for me. Over the past six years or so I was relieved to discover two other alternatives that are also part of the Christian tradition, though less prominent--universalism and the subject of the present book, conditional immortality. Universalism--that everyone would eventually be saved--did not, in the final analysis, seem to really come to grips with the overwhelming scriptural testimony that some kind of radical fateful decision is possible to people. Conditional immortality--that people who absolutely refuse God's plan for them will be taken out of existence--seems to me the best scriptural understanding of what the Lord meant by "losing one's soul"--not everlasting punishment but the withdrawal of existence. This book is an attempt to explain this theological theory. It is not presented as a definite dogma or teaching of the church, but as one of the possible results of a persistent and irrevocable decision against God.

Now and at the Hour of our Death

Before and since giving a lecture at Baylor in 2015 on eschatology and funerary customs, I have kept an eye on changing Christian ideas about and pastoral enactments of the same. It's very clear that much has changed even within the last three decades. But those customs and ideas have changed across the entire span of Christian history, and a book just released this month sheds light on a major change in late antique Christian practice: Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity by Ellen Muehlberger (Oxford UP, 2019), 264pp.

About this book we are told:

Late antiquity saw a proliferation of Christian texts dwelling on the emotions and physical sensations of dying, not as a heroic martyr in a public square or a judge's court, but as an individual, at home in a bed or in a private room. In sermons, letters, and ascetic traditions, late ancient Christians imagined the last minutes of life and the events that followed death in elaborate detail. The majority of these imagined scenarios linked the quality of the experience to the moral state of the person who died. Death was no longer the "happy ending," in Judith Perkins's words, it had been to Christians of the first three centuries, an escape from the difficult and painful world. Instead, death was most often imagined as a terrifying, desperate experience. This book is the first to trace how, in late ancient Christianity, death came to be thought of as a moment of reckoning: a physical ordeal whose pain is followed by an immediate judgment of one's actions by angels and demons and, after that, fitting punishment.

Because late ancient Christian culture valued the use of the imagination as a religious tool and because Christian teachers encouraged Christians to revisit the prospect of their deaths often, this novel description of death was more than an abstract idea. Rather, its appearance ushered in a new ethical sensibility among Christians, in which one's death was to be imagined frequently and anticipated in detail. This was, at first glance, meant as a tool for individuals: preachers counted on the fact that becoming aware of a judgment arriving at the end of one's life tends to sharpen one's scruples. But, as this book argues, the change in Christian sensibility toward death did not just affect individuals. Once established, it shifted the ethics of Christianity as a tradition.

This is because death repeatedly and frequently imagined as the moment of reckoning created a fund of images and ideas about what constituted a human being and how variances in human morality should be treated. This had significant effects on the Christian assumption of power in late antiquity, especially in the case of the capacity to authorize violence against others. The thinking about death traced here thus contributed to the seemingly paradoxical situation in which Christians proclaimed their identity with a crucified person, yet were willing to use force against their ideological opponents.

Death and Dying

Earlier this year I published an article based on a lecture I gave at Baylor University in 2015. In it I examined contemporary Western Christian funeral rites, starting with the Latin tradition after Vatican II. The scholarship by other Western Christians was quite critical of those reforms, as I went on to be in my lecture, all of us arguing that those obsequies work at cross-purposes from the necessary eschatological proclamation that funerals are uniquely situated to convey. In other words, funerals fail not only to adequately convey an understanding of death, judgment, heaven, and hell; but they fail to do other things, too. I went on tentatively (and non-triumphalistically) to suggest that one place to look to begin to repair this damage would be to the Byzantine funeral rites.

Before that lecture and since, I have, then, maintained an ongoing interest in the practices (or, increasingly, the disturbing lack thereof) surrounding death and dying in our culture, and changing practices around funerals. I have noted on here in the past fascinating and disturbing studies--such as that of Candi Cann--which I again commend to your interest.

All this is prologue to saying that a new book just published this summer looks to deserve a place in this burgeoning syllabus on Christian obsequies: Christian Dying: Witnesses from the Tradition, eds. George Kalantzis and Matthew Levering (Cascade Books, 2018), 284pp.

The table of contents shows a wonderful abundance of Eastern Christian thought, starting with the well known patristics scholar Brian Daley looking at Gregory of Nyssa's thought on death and dying; continuing on with Marcus Plested (whom I interviewed here) looking at Orthodox practices; and then Paul Gavrilyuk looking at Bulgakov's sophiology. 

For more about this book the publisher tells us the following:

We human beings are mortal. Our lives in this world inevitably terminate in death. This reality, however, need not cause us to despair, since Jesus Christ has gone before us into the far country of death, giving us hope that this defining feature of our earthly lives is not the end, but instead is an entrance into Christ's presence and a path to the fullness of the Spirit's new creation in which God will be all in all. Christian Dying: Witnesses from the Tradition is a collection of essays containing reflections from Christian authors--whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant--on the meaning and appropriation of Christian hope in the face of death in conversation with a number of great voices from the Christian tradition.

Darwin's Worms and Freud's Death Drive

I have often commented on here over the past few years about the many books of the English literary scholar and psycho-analyst Adam Phillips. Having finished another, Darwin's Worms: On Life Stories and Death Stories, herewith a few thoughts.

This is a short book, and is in essence two separate essays, the first on Darwin, the second on Freud, and they are only loosely stitched together. Phillips suggests that what interests both men is a fascination with natural history and an archaeological approach to the past. Moreover, both were skeptical of the idea of the redemption of humankind, and believed that any major changes were going to be very limited, both individually and politically.

The essay on Freud is useful in reminding us of several things Phillips has addressed in some of his other books, including his excellent "biography" of Freud I discussed here: the tendency of Freudian thought to "undo" itself by turning its awareness of our propensity for self-deception on itself; the treachery, therefore, and unreliability of all biographers; and the important place of the death drive, discussed most fully, of course, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

That drive, or instinct as some translators put it, came to Freud relatively late (1920) when other attempts to understand human beings proved limited if not futile. The theory of the death drive, often regarded as Freud's most speculative and controversial claim, arouse out of a need, Phillips says, "to tell more persuasive, more convincing life stories: stories about how people actively, if unwittingly, undo their lives; and how this is a source of satisfaction to them" (78). This theory does not posit that people are straightforwardly suicidal or anything like that; if often does not involve literal death, but rather many other ways of undermining, sometimes fatally, relationships, jobs, fortunes and prospects in ways that make no sense at least consciously or rationally. But such self-destruction does make sense in other ways which the death drive helps to explicate, not least that we seek relief from our desiring, making the death drive "the object of desire that finally releases us from desire," as Phillips concludes.

The death drive thus showed Freud something he had struggled with for a long time: why desires are not always for what seem to be self-evident goods--family, health, prosperity--but are often based on deception and destruction. For Freud, says Phillips, human beings are "not truth-seeking animals in any simple sense." Thus, while Christians and others may believe that "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free," it is by no means straightforward that people always want that truth, much less freedom--a point Erich Fromm powerfully illustrated in his landmark best-seller, Escape from Freedom.

Killing Matthew Levering: A How-To Guide

If I were trapped on the proverbial island in the middle of nowhere, and could only pick one contemporary Roman Catholic theologian to share my solitude, I'm quite sure it would be Matthew Levering. Conversation with him would never flag or bore, and always unearth new things to think about, or, better, old things in a new way. He manages, with astonishing effortlessness, to range freely and widely across Christian tradition East and West (both Catholic and Protestant) in search of answers to questions today, being, as I have said of him before, that "scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven [who] is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old" (Matt. 13:52).

This scribe, whose evangelical pen never rests, has another book coming out this month. With Lent being relatively early this year, and Lent being a time to contemplate both dying to ourselves and the dying of Christ, this book will make for very suitable ante-paschal reading in our spiritual deserts: Dying and the Virtues by Matthew Levering (Eerdmans, 2018), 352pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In this rich book Matthew Levering explores nine key virtues that we need to die (and live) well: love, hope, faith, penitence, gratitude, solidarity, humility, surrender, and courage.

Retrieving and engaging a variety of biblical, theological, historical, and medical resources, Levering journeys through the various stages and challenges of the dying process, beginning with the fear of annihilation and continuing through repentance and gratitude, suffering and hope, before arriving finally at the courage needed to say goodbye to one’s familiar world. 

Grounded in careful readings of Scripture, the theological tradition, and contemporary culture, Dying and the Virtues comprehensively and beautifully shows how these nine virtues effectively unite us with God, the One who alone can conquer death.

After Dying in Byzantium, Where Does Your Soul Go?

If you hang around any Orthodox blogs or apologetics sites, you'll soon come across heated discussion about "toll-houses" and related matters trying to figure out the soul's fate post-mortem. The scholar Stephen Shoemaker, whom I have interviewed on here in the past in connection with his other works, has an excellent essay here.

Shoemaker's essay references, inter alia, recent works on the topic, including a book released just this spring:  Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium: The Fate of the Soul in Theology, Literature, and Art 
by Vasileios Marinis (Cambridge UP, 2017), 214pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

For all their reputed and professed preoccupation with the afterlife, the Byzantines had no systematic conception of the fate of the soul between death and the Last Judgement. Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium marries for the first time liturgical, theological, literary, and material evidence to investigate a fundamental question: what did the Byzantines believe happened after death? This interdisciplinary study provides an in-depth analysis and synthesis of hagiography, theological treatises, apocryphal texts, liturgical services, as well as images of the fate of the soul in manuscript and monumental decoration. It also places the imagery of the afterlife, both literary and artistic, within the context of Byzantine culture, spirituality, and soteriology. The book intends to be the definitive study on concepts of the afterlife in Byzantium, and its interdisciplinary structure will appeal to students and specialists from a variety of areas in medieval studies.

The Liturgy of Death

Two years ago this month I was invited to the Wilken Colloquium at Baylor University, where I gave a lecture on contemporary eschatological heresies in light of Byzantine liturgical tradition. I have, before and since, remained very interested in how our culture treats death, and how Christians should respond to that, noting over the years some of the problems with contemporary funeral practices and the strange, curious new practices that are supplanting some older ones.

It was, then, with great interest that I received notice from St. Vladimir's Seminary Press of a new publication of recently discovered lectures by the great Orthodox liturgical theologian Alexander Schmemann, on whom I have often commented on here over the years: The Liturgy of Death (SVS Press, 2017), 234pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In these previously unpublished talks, Fr Alexander Schmemann critiques contemporary culture s distorted understanding of death. He then examines the Church s rites for burial and her prayers for the dead. Though they are often misunderstood, at the heart of the services Fr Alexander finds the paschal proclamation: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.

For the Orthodox Church, the time has arrived not to reform the liturgy of death, nor to modernize it (God forbid!), but simply to rediscover it. To rediscover it in its truth and glory means in its connection with the faith of the Church, with the meaning for the dead, for us, for the whole world and the entire creation of Christ s deathless death, and in connection with baptism and Eucharist, with Lent and Pascha, with the whole life of the Church and each one of us, her members. This rediscovery is needed first of all by the Church, but also by our secular culture, for which, whether we know it or not, we are responsible. How are we to rediscover it?

Contents:

Introduction by Alexis Vinogradov

Chapter 1 The Development of Christian Funeral Rites
Chapter 2 The Funeral Rites and Practices
Chapter 3 Prayers for the Dead
Chapter 4 The Liturgy of Death and Contemporary Culture

Appendix
The Order for the Burial of the Dead

The Weight, Work, and Worth of the Dead

This winsome review essay draws our attention to what sounds like a fascinating new book I must read, Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton UP, 2015), 711pp.

In reading the review, I am put in mind of several similar books I have noted on here over the years, beginning with what remains one of the most moving and compelling: Juliet du Boulay, Cosmos, Life, and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village. Boulay's book is an anthropological study of life in the Greek mountains in the latter part of the 20th century. As such she examines a great deal besides death customs, but those remain some of the most fascinating chapters in her lovely and lyrical study.

I have made note on here (and elsewhere) several times over the years of books treating dying, death, and the dead, including our changing funerary practices and treatment of the grieving.

In particular, go here for my interview with the Orthodox deacon and his wife, Mark and Elizabeth Barma, discussing their book A Christian Ending: A Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition. They are doing rare but incredibly important work in offering alternatives to "professional" burial practices today that have so often been stripped of any real meaning beyond bourgeois sentimentality.

The importance of Christians offering an unabashedly Christian witness to the dignity of the dying and the dead, and to their immortal souls which need our prayers and not our decadent and indulgent "celebration of life" pseudo-liturgies in the local pub, is especially brought home to us by Candi Cann's book,Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century.

Cann's book is a fascinating anthropological and sociological analysis that reveals, inter alia, the necessity humans have for rituals surrounding the dead; and if churches won't provide them in an eschatologically robust fashion, then substitutes will be found, no matter how cringe-worthy they may seem to some of us. I discussed Cann's book here in some detail.

How We Grieve Today

I have made no secret of my dislike of the funeral industry in North America, nor of many Christian funerals today, nor of our culture's denial of death and unwillingness to allow people to grieve. Equally, I cheered at the emergence of new practices, which I discussed here in my interview with the Orthodox deacon Mark Barna and his wife Elizabeth about their excellent book A Christian Ending, which pastors and parishes should read and put into practice where possible.

Now along comes a new book with a wealth of fascinating detail: Candi Cann, Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century (University of Kentucky Press, 2014), 212pp. 

I began reading this book last fall in preparation for a lecture I've been asked to give at Baylor University at the end of February on Byzantine funeral liturgies. As someone who thinks that the Byzantine funeral liturgy as it is most often celebrated today remains a great gift to the grieving, I am nonetheless also aware of how odd it appears to many North Americans today. If Christians are to continue to preach a message of the risen Christ, then we have to understand how our contemporaries view death and grieving today, and Cann's book aids that process. It is wonderfully written--clear, crisp, cogent. The research and learning, which are considerable, are lightly worn. For someone who spends a good deal of time dealing with sociological research, Cann does not burden her reader with the academic jargon and ponderous pseudo-insights one often finds among academic writing in that discipline.

I confess that as I've made my way through the book, some of my dislike--bordering on snobbery--for the practices she describes began to melt away. I have been a staunch traditionalist when it comes to grieving, horrified by people who show up at funerals in anything other than black suits (for men). (I have lost track of the number of funerals—as well as weddings—I have attended where people show up at the church dressed as though they are en route to the nearest beach. It seems deplorably common today that more and more men know no intimate congress with a jacket and tie. To be too poor to own a suit is quite understandable; showing up as a slob too lazy to put one on is not.) 

Thus I was prepared to dislike some of the new things Cann documents: e.g., the rise of car decals after someone has died. I initially thought them rather impermanent and cheap, but she made the helpful analogy to other, earlier, "transitory" forms of mourning that involved public expressions: e.g., appearing in black, or wearing a black armband, for a year after a death. Given how much time we spend in our cars today, and given, as she says, how much "car culture" is imbued, especially in the United States, with a sense of personal identity, and given, moreover, how little time one is given today to formal periods of mourning, the use of car decals is an interesting way to let people know one remains in a state of mourning--and also to ensure people do not forget the deceased, either.

Other trends, again just in the last decade, include the rise of memorial tattoos. Here my snobbery has not abated: I think tattoos ugly and vulgar and bourgeois. But I now understand and quite accept why people get them as memorials. Cann recounts several moving interviews with tattoo "artists" who relay how they are turned into priests and therapists when working on a client who is having an image of a dead loved one engraved on their body. The very process of "inking" becomes therapeutic and almost spiritual-sacramental for some. Moreover, it is now even possible (though apparently of dubious legality) in some places for the tattoo ink to be admixed with the cremains of the dead person, so that the one being tattooed now bears in his or her body some part of the very flesh of the decedent!

Additional ways in which forms of grieving today are changing are further documented in the book. I will discuss those in the coming days. In the meantime, Candi Cann's Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century remains a fascinating work and I commend it to your interest.

Icons of Death

Driving home the other day, I turned off the radio in a fury when some nitwit on the local NPR station kept referring to people who recently "passed." To that insufferable recent usage, I always reply with heavy sarcasm: Passed what? wind? the off-ramp on the highway they were supposed to take? a school examination? "Passed away" was bad enough--which I never used not only because I abhor death-denying euphemisms but also because it's shoddy theology--but this "passed" business really is intolerable. People die; when they have done so, they are dead. We are--as Evelyn Waugh noted, in his own myth-busting, euphemism-mocking satire of death and funerals, The Loved One--parched for this kind of straight-talk today, stranded in a desert of denial and obfuscation. The inability or unwillingness to speak candidly about death serves nobody well.

Released this month is a Kindle version of an interesting book that reveals a very different approach to death taken by Eastern Christians, an approach that looks death in the face and avoids the cowardly dodges so many take today. Originally published in 1997 by a leading classicist and historian who is well acquainted with Byzantine iconography is Robin Cormack's Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds.

About this book we are told:

Icons are among the most elusive subjects in the history of art, but at the same time their study constitutes possibly its fastest expanding field, and with the opening-up of the former Soviet Union many new objects are being discovered, studied and exhibited. In this book, Robin Cormack considers the icon as an integral document of society and gives us new insights into the nature of Byzantine art. Painting the Soul explores both the creation and the development of the icon. After the early Christians – like the pagans before them – had come to expect their god to be visually present among them, endless questions confronted both the artist and the Church. What did Christ look like? How should Christ be represented? Should Christ be represented (as he is for example on the Turin Shroud)? Appropriately, Cormack’s study ends with Venetian Crete, where the icon underwent its final development and transformation into the art of the Renaissance. Here, established Byzantine forms of religious art confronted developing Renaissance modes of expression: the first ‘icons’ of El Greco were painted in Crete. Painting the Soul is beautifully illustrated, featuring many little-known works of art. Even so, Cormack treats the icon not as a mere artistic product, but as the symbolic face of medieval Europe. He shows how this new field within the history of art – the study of the icon – will transform our understanding of European art and culture.

As noted, Cormack is the author of Byzantine Art (Oxford UP, 2000), 256pp. as well as Icons (Harvard UP, 2007), 144pp.

Theologizing in the Presence of Burning Children

It was, I remember clearly, June 1989 when, as a teenager, I came across the deeply arresting statement of Rabbi Irving Greenberg which I never forgot: "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children." That statement--originally made in the context of reflecting on the Holocaust--returned to mind this weekend in the wake of the ineffable horrors in Newtown, Connecticut (a scant 30 minutes from where my wife grew up, and her family still live).

Understandably the desire for some kind of explanation is strong, but I think that too many Christians say too much, and usually of highly questionable, if not outright heretical, value when trying to explain what is rightly called the mysterium iniquitatis. One of my earliest theological mentors, Stanley Hauerwas, is right, I think, to call for Christians to resist the urge to somehow rationalize evil as "part of God's will" or something "Providence intends" for some yet-unknown "greater purpose." In his early but still very important book Naming the Silences Hauerwas begins with the death of a child, an act that, more than any other, renders the world almost unintelligible and unbearable as I know from having watched my parents bury two of their children--two of my sisters. Having gone through that, nothing makes me incandescent with rage faster than listening to some pious dolt try to claim that "it's all part of God's plan" or "it's all for the best." God plans for people to suffer cancer and die horrible deaths while still young, leaving three small children under ten without their mother? God somehow had a hand in the massacre of innocents in Connecticut this week where He'll soon perform some kind of conjuring trick to pull "good" from this manifest evil so that we can all be reassured that a classroom of innocent first-graders did not die in vain? God was at work in the Holocaust, or any other evil we can think of? If that's the case then, like Ivan Karamazov, I should straightaway hand in my ticket to the Kingdom of God and have nothing to do with it or Him--for such a God could only be counted as repulsive. Rather than make such claims in the name of such a God, Christians would do well, as Hauerwas counsels, to observe a period of silence in which grief and rage--so prevalent in the Psalms and so unreservedly expressed there--can emerge and be expressed without pious treacle being poured on them in a misguided attempt to offer some kind of metaphysical "help."

The other person who has written intelligibly on evil--that is to say, who has recognized that it cannot be rationalized away, and any attempt to claim it is part of God's plan is monstrous--is the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, some of whose thoughts may be read here. Hart's longer reflection on what used to be called "theodicy" may be found in his book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
In both Hart and Hauerwas, we are reminded of the book of Job, and the fact that Job never gets complete or entirely satisfactory answers to the problem of evil. Job never received "closure," that most fatuous and fraudulent of modern notions. Like the apostles in the garden of Gethsemane hours before evil was visited upon another child, Son of the Father, Innocent of innocents, who was to be bound, tortured, and executed, we must "stay here and watch awhile" before daring, if ever, to open our mouths.

Life after Death

It is an occasion of some dispute among some Orthodox as to what happens after we die. Some wholly reject Latin notions of purgatory; some entertain theories of "toll houses"; some simply say we do not know exactly what happens after we die other than we are judged, and the prayers of the living can be efficacious to those who have died. A new book by one of francophone Orthodoxy's important writers today, Jean-Claude Larchet, whose articles we have published in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, may shed some light here: Life after Death according to the Orthodox Tradition, trans. G.J. Champoux (Orthodox Research Institute Press, 2012), 348pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Life after Death according to the Orthodox Tradition presents the teachings from Orthodox Church tradition. On a few points, these teachings differ significantly from those of the Catholic and Protestant confessions. Some divergences between eastern and western traditions have existed since the fifth century, but have been considerably accentuated since the twelfth century, when the West, to borrow an expression from the historian Jacques Le Goff, 'invented Purgatory.' The Latin tradition is, however, in its roots, in perfect agreement with the eastern tradition. Also, although in our references we give the greatest space to the Greek Fathers, we will surely cite convergent or complementary teachings and testimonies of the Latin Fathers and hagiographers of antiquity. We hope in this way to make better known to Orthodox the teachings of their own often scattered about and poorly known tradition, and also to acquaint Catholic or Protestant readers with teachings unknown to them or which long ago ceased being within the compass of their faith, but which nevertheless belong to the rich patrimony of an ancient Christian tradition which, in its origins, is or should be common to all.

Mark and Elizabeth Barna on Dying and the Dead

Earlier I drew attention to a new book about the ars moriendi: Mark and Elizabeth Barna, A Christian Ending: a Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition (Divine Ascent Press, 2011), xii+169pp. I asked both authors for an interview, and here are their thoughts:

AD: Tell us about both your backgrounds

I was baptized in a little Carpatho Russian Orthodox Church in the coal mining village of Elkhorn, WV, in 1954. The same year, Elizabeth was baptized Roman Catholic. Her father was a college professor, so they moved around a bit until settling in Pennsylvania. Her mother’s family was primarily Mormon. She spent every summer with her maternal grandparents and became quite familiar with the Mormon sect. My hometown was four hours distant from the church where I was baptized, and there were none closer, so I was raised in a local Methodist church.

Being children of the 60’s and coming of age in the early 70’s, our formative years were quite turbulent. To our continuing surprise, when we decided to get married, the first question we asked ourselves was “which church”? So, in our effort to decide, we read the book of Mormon and visited a Catholic church with her dad, to no avail. We finally settled on the Orthodox Church for a variety of reasons. We were married on our farm by two priests of the Antiochian Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church. The farm burned not long after the birth of our second son. We were homeless for a year with two babies and two dogs until we finally settled back into the suburbs. We were both active in our church.

There I became one of the first trained English chanters in the Antiochian Archdiocese. We started a business in a large urban mall, ran it for six and half years then went bankrupt, lost everything again and finally moved to Charleston, SC where Elizabeth had a job opportunity. Here we joined the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity. I continued chanting some of the services and became the campus minister for the Orthodox cadets at The Citadel. Since then we’ve helped establish two Orthodox missions in the Charleston area; one for the Antiochian Archdiocese and one for the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). I was ordained deacon in Holy Ascension Orthodox Church (OCA) in 2006 and still serve there today. This is about where the story picks up in the introduction to A Christian Ending with the death of Elizabeth’s mother and our growing interest in hospice care.

AD: What led you to write this book in particular?

Over the years my discomfort with the American funeral industry led me to explore burial in an Orthodox Christian context.

Clearly, it is an important part of life and we want to do it right. To my surprise, I had accumulated a good amount of information on traditional Christian burial. One day I mentioned this to Fr. John Parker and half joking, told him to find a seminarian in need of a thesis and I’d turn my files over to him to write a book. He said, “No, you do it.” “A Christian Ending” started out as a simple instruction manual for preparing a body for burial. The first draft was simply a step by step, hands-on description of how to prepare a body for burial. We wrote it specifically for Orthodox Christians and therefore took a lot of basic Christian knowledge for granted. Our later experiences led us to include information on legal matters; dealing with the coroner, hospitals, and nursing homes; and mobilizing parishioners to help. Later we included some short chapters on the evolution of funerals. Realizing that natural burial is becoming popular with the new-age and "green" folks, we added a chapter of some basic theology for the non-Orthodox or non-Christian reader as a form of outreach.

The first opportunity we had to use our own instruction manual was for a dear friend and parishioner who died unexpectedly. It was a great shock to us all. We went to the morgue to prepare his body and everything went “by the book.” Everyone involved with that first “in-house” funeral was so touched by it that we knew we would continue. Another thing really struck me. The director of the Medical University morgue told me as we were leaving, “We’ve had Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in here. You’re the first Christians.” That struck me as very sad: “You’re the first Christians.” We of all people, the people of the Cross and the martyrs, have not been taking care of our own departed brethren in an intimate, traditional way as other cultures and religions do. What kind of witness is that?

During the preparation procedure we had been reading selections from the psalms, so we developed a small service of prayers and readings to use specifically during the preparation of the body for burial. The readings typically last about as long as the preparation and were included in the book for ease of use. The book was not written for profit or notoriety, but simply to make what we have learned available to the Church and any others who are interested. To us it just makes sense that we should render this final service to our beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. We have done this for friends, family, and complete strangers. We have also trained other people, including those we would never expect who have insisted on preparing their loved ones themselves. Everyone who has been involved has been touched and greatly moved by the power and simplicity of this simple service.

AD: How has your Orthodox faith had an impact on your own work with the dying and the dead?

I don’t think we would be doing this if it were not for our faith. This is not something Elizabeth and I would have chosen to do. I was trained as an artist and spent many years as an industrial/technical photographer. Elizabeth has worked in both healthcare and the hospitality industry. Orthodoxy has taught us that all that we have is a gift from God. Growing in the faith, we continue to learn to seek the acquisition of the Holy Spirit and to conform ourselves to the image and likeness of Christ. This inevitably leads to a life of thanksgiving and offering. If I know that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot make my heart beat one more time, how can I get puffed up about what I have accomplished or accumulated in my life? If every heartbeat is a gift then certainly everything else is too. So what can you do with that, but offer it back to God with thanksgiving. One offering we make is serving others. We always knew we would be the ones to care for our parents in their old age.

We didn’t know we would have three of them living with us for six years. Initially, my interest in natural burial was purely selfish. I was motivated by my own desire not to be embalmed and to find a legal way to do that, other than cremation, which is not Orthodox. However, when I discovered that natural burial is truly the proper ancient Orthodox Christian form of burial I felt obliged to share that knowledge with others. Our Lord Jesus Christ and Christian love both give us the strength to overcome primal fears, superstitions, and our own squeamishness. It gives us the strength to serve others in most any capacity. We can do things we never thought possible before--such as changing a mother’s diapers a thousand times or caring for dad’s catheter and feeding tube, even washing and anointing their bodies for burial.

AD: Since the 1960s at least, as the books of Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh both make clear, North Americans seem to have been deeply conflicted about death--or even, as Ernest Becker argued in his 1974 book The Denial of Death, plainly in denial about it. What factors help to explain our culture's denial and conflicts over death?

I am not a sociologist. I’m just a guy who didn’t want to be embalmed. I agree that it is clear we are mostly in denial of our own impending death. We discuss a bit of the history of the funeral industry in the book. Industrialization, urbanization, the increase and improvement of hospital care and the development of the funeral industry all had an impact on our culture’s estrangement from the daily reality of death. America is a very materialistic society. Our culture is all about the acquisition of bigger and better, all-new, super-fantastic, whiz-bang stuff. We are trained from birth to be consumers and, if we want to really be successful, inventors of the “next big thing.” Our culture worships youth and disposes of the old. It worships youth so much that our laws are willing to sacrifice the next generation of young so as not to inconvenience the current generation of youth. America no longer has any cultural reverence for the wisdom of age like we see in many other cultures. The world has passed through the post-Christian age and, as it enters the anti-Christian age, the hunger for stuff has replaced any understanding of the acquisition of virtue.

You may have seen the bumper sticker that reads, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” Wins what? He’s still dead. Then what? Generally our society doesn’t even want to consider “what then.” We want it all and we want it now. If all of life is about more and more stuff, power, ambition and pleasure, then naturally you don’t want to think about what comes after. Death marks the end of our existence and our ambitions. It is the ultimate defeat and proof that life is meaningless. We don’t want to think about that. It’s really just so terrifying that denial seems like a valid option.

If losing everything twice in a decade taught Elizabeth and me anything, it was that “it’s just stuff.” It is not at all what is important in life. As Christians our entire life is, or should be, in preparation for our death and judgment. To the Christian death is a defeated enemy. This is the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. Death is conquered by the life-giving death of Christ on the cross. By his resurrection from the dead, Christ destroyed the power of death and transformed our death from ultimate annihilation to eternal life in peace, joy, and love. The saints teach us to keep the remembrance of our own death on the very tip of our nose, always right in front of our face. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone was able to do that. The constant remembrance of death is a very sobering and important practice according to the saints. They universally teach that the antidote for the fear of death is the fear of sin. If we were even half as afraid of sinning as we are of dying, we would not sin and therefore would have no fear of death and judgment.

AD: While instinctively respecting the Orthodox prohibition on cremation, I confess that I've not always found the arguments for that tradition very strong, but your own book has helped me to see anew the wisdom of Orthodoxy on this position. Explain for our readers the Orthodox position on cremation and its theological rationale.

I would never presume to speak for the Orthodox Church. I can only speak for myself and my own understanding. I’m a pretty simple-minded fellow. My understanding is that God created us with bodies for a reason. Man was created for an intimate relationship with the creator unlike any of the angels or heavenly hosts. The image in Genesis where God breathed life and spirit into Adam’s nostrils is the picture of a very intimate relationship.

According to scripture, this is the living temple where our creator dwells. It is washed in the sacred waters of Baptism, anointed with Holy Chrism and nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ. It is a temple beyond price. Yet, through pride and jealousy we throw away that intimate relationship and desecrate the temple daily. In the history of the early church and the Lives of the Saints we read that the faithful would “rush” to retrieve the bodies of the martyrs, often at the risk of their own lives. They would kiss and caress them, clean and anoint them and give them an honorable burial. The physical remains of the martyrs and all the saints had, and have, value beyond price. We have never thought of the body as a disposable container for the soul. We have never had a dualistic understanding of the body and spirit as separate pieces of the human puzzle. Human beings were created to be a whole being, body and soul. It is sin and death that causes the rupture. The Lord said, “My Holy One shall not see decay.” We have evidence from every age, all around the world that his words are true. All over the world there are incorrupt, often wonder-working remains of saints. Obviously, these are very valuable relics that would not be with us today if they had been destroyed by cremation. As an Orthodox Christian, my entire life is supposed to be a reflection of our Lord’s own extreme humility. It is to be lived humbly and selflessly as an offering of love. Each day I try to place my whole life completely in God’s hands and trust Him to guide me in the way wherein I should walk. I trust Him with my life, my breath and my heart beat. Can I not trust Him to properly dispose of His own earthly temple? In that regard, cremation is my final act of pride. By choosing to have my body burned, I decide what will happen to my remains, not God.

AD: Anecdotally, I've seen a trend growing in the past decade or so, as more and more North Americans seem to be eschewing funerals entirely. Many obituaries today say things like "At Mr. Smith's request, no visitation or service will be held" or "Sophia asked for no services but for family and friends to gather for a drink at the Fox and Hound Pub in her honor." Is this a trend you see, and if so, what do you think is behind it?

That type of thing is alien to everything Orthodox Christians understand about funerals. The funeral is not for the deceased, it’s for the living. I can understand a person not wanting to cause their loved ones the stress of dealing with a funeral, but that is just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the funeral is for. A funeral is for the living to show honor, pay tribute and say goodbye to the deceased. We’ve been doing this since prehistoric times. It is, in some ways, the climax or culmination of the grieving process. In other ways it is just the beginning of that process. Either way, without it we are short-changed.

In the Orthodox funeral service the body is censed several times. There is a great censing where the body, the altar, the people, and the entire church are censed. The great censing is always an act of union, essentially, circling the entire church in a ring of smoke, a sacrifice rising up to God. This act of including the deceased in the typical great censing of the temple is a unifying movement. It is a reminder to all that the deceased is still a member of our body. At the end of the service, our last act is to kiss the body of the deceased as we did when we greeted them in life. I can’t understand anyone wanting to willingly give that up.

AD: I don't know if you have read the work of Fr. Cyprian Hutcheon, whose 2003 doctoral dissertation is entitled "From Lamentation to Alleluia : An Interpretation of the Theology of the Present-Day Byzantine-Rite Funeral Service analyzed through its Practical Relationship to Bereaved Persons." Hutcheon is now a priest of the OCA in Canada, and has for years worked as a physician also. (Details about him are here.) He makes a quite convincing argument that the Byzantine funeral obtains a marvelous balance between mourning and grief on the one hand ("lamentation"), and joy in the resurrection ("alleluia") on the other. Do you see that balance? What other resources besides the funeral does Orthodox Christianity offer to people struggling with death?

Oh yes, without question. The Holy Fathers understood human psychology better than anyone today. Why shouldn’t they. They were in intimate communion with the inventor of human beings and human psychology. Our memorial services are prescribed for the third, ninth and fortieth day and then again on the first and third anniversary. Psychologists have since proven that these are precisely the periods which are milestones in the grieving process. The Church knows us better than we know ourselves.

The very first funeral that we directed was an excellent example of what we claim an Orthodox funeral should be, and more importantly, should do. Our friend Zoran died quite unexpectedly as he was leaving the hospital after a short stay. He left three beautiful teenaged orphans as his wife had died several years before. He had no resources so we quickly pooled ours to bury him. Our church donated a casket, prepared his body at the hospital morgue, put it in the back of a parishioner’s Suburban and transported him to another parishioner’s farm for burial while other friends dug the grave. The location is an ideal spot on a tidal creek with a small chapel on the property. Even though Zoran had recently expanded the chapel, it was too small for the casket so we set up outside. When the kids arrived it was terrible. His two daughters clutched each other and screamed when they saw him lying there. The memory of it makes it very hard to tell you about it. They wailed so loud and long that the service was delayed. We were all there, the choir and the people, waiting until we could calm them. There was no consolation. It broke everyone’s heart. Finally, as soon as the service started, they were calmed. They sat weeping but not wailing. During the service, even the sky cried; raining just enough to wet our sheet music with drops.

At the end, we kissed his body.
There was more weeping but not like before. We carried the casket the hundred yards or so to the grave, said the graveside prayers, lowered the casket and filled in the grave. As is traditional, the sisters and their brother helped fill the grave. Then we went back to the house for a mercy meal and remembrances of our old friend. By the time we left there Zoran’s kids were smiling and laughing remembering their father. We knew it would be hard, but they would be ok. That’s what a funeral is supposed to do.

AD: You argue that "burial without a coffin is still the best option" (p. 36). This may be quite a surprise to many today. Why do you say that?

For ages that’s the way it was done. Boxes only came into use when it became necessary to carry a body some distance for burial. When the family was buried in the back yard there was no need for a box. Boxes cost money and take time to make. A burial shroud or winding sheet was all that was needed. Boxes rot and collapse, then the earth subsides. It’s kind of messy if you think about it. The idea is for the body to be in contact with the earth. Christians are not as strict about this as the Jews who still drill holes in the bottom of the coffin. The concept is sound though. Dust to dust. The traditional Christian burial gown is a baptismal robe with no pockets, signifying our hope in the resurrection and our total dependence upon God. Once in contact with the earth it is up to God to determine what happens next.

AD: You argue that "death...is an evangelical opportunity" (p.58). Say more about that. Can it be a vehicle for spreading the gospel in a culture so in denial of death?

Yes I do believe that. An example of that is what the director of the morgue told me about our being the first Christians in his morgue. That really struck me. In all the years the morgue has been operating, the only Christians to claim a body there were professional funeral directors. The morgue staff themselves have been very receptive and impressed by what we do. They ask a lot of questions and have been very helpful. The way we face death says a lot about the way we lived our lives. The love of Christ and the hope of the resurrection give one great hope and courage. Millions of people were converted to Christianity by the brave witness of the early martyrs. Often, people who watched the Christians being tortured and martyred were so impressed that they immediately believed in Christ and offered themselves up as martyrs. Clearly, death can be a great witness to the truth, power and love of Jesus Christ in a pagan world.



In addition, people are starving for a sense of community. Seeing a group of people caring for one another in such a loving, intimate way says “community” better than any billboard, television ad, or Facebook page ever could. We have a petition we pray in every service for “a Christian ending to our lives, painless, blameless and peaceful, and a good defense before the awesome judgment seat of Christ.” We try to live our lives as a witness of the peace and joy He brings when He comes to live in us. Our death and the loving respect we show our deceased should be a continuation of that witness.



Last Judgment Icon, St. Elias Church, Brampton, Ontario

AD: In reading some of your practical suggestions (e.g., obtaining dry ice and using it for preservation of a corpse), I thought that some of this kind of work may require more work than individuals are really capable of doing. But that's part of your argument, is it not, that caring for the dead is really a parish-wide or community function? And that "clergy must be willing to discuss this subject openly with the whole church" (p.103). Are clergy doing that? Are there many Orthodox communities ready and willing to assume these responsibilities?
We have had a very good response to our book. People are certainly interested; both clergy and laity. Some clergy are taking the lead with their communities. In other churches lay people are taking the lead with the support of the clergy. The effort will vary depending on the character of the particular community. I do feel that the enthusiastic support of the clergy is essential for success. In the book we discuss mobilizing the entire parish as the ideal situation. We realize the ideal may be achieved in different degrees by different communities. There is really nothing complicated, difficult, or time-consuming about the preparation of a body for burial. We found our source for dry ice at a local supermarket. Then we put together a preparation kit before we needed it. Now all we have to do is grab the kit and stop by the supermarket on the way. I do believe that, if we claim we are The Body of Christ and we say we are a community, then we should celebrate the life and death of our members as a community. We are not called to be a loose association of individuals who find themselves in the same place at the same time every week. We pray in every litany of every service, “let us commend ourselves and each other and all our life unto Christ our God.” Just as the sin of one member affects the whole Body, the death of any member has an impact on the entire community. It is important for our community to recognize this reality and respond to it as a unified, loving body. We fall short of the ideal daily. But we continue to strive for it.

An in-house funeral can be a great community builder. Not everyone has to be hands-on dealing with the corpse. It only takes three people about forty-five minutes to prepare a body for burial. But preparing a funeral is quite another thing. As we describe in the book, there are plenty of other things to do. We have several people in our parish that have volunteered to help preparing a body. We have also had families in which everyone pitched in to prepare the body and couldn’t thank us enough for the opportunity. We have been doing this for about eight years. We’ve prepared over a dozen bodies of friends, family, and strangers. Still, our burial fellowship consists of Elizabeth, Fr. John, and me. We have not quite reached the ideal.

AD: What other books or articles have been especially instrumental in shaping your views and practices? What books would you recommend for Christians trying to come to grips with death, both practically and theologically?

We’ve included a pretty complete bibliography in A Christian Ending.

My first recommendation is the Holy Scriptures and the Lives of the Saints. The more familiar we are with them the better prepared we are for anything. I prefer the Great Collection of the Lives of Saints from Chrysostom Press but there are other good collections. I’d also recommend the funeral orations of St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil the Great. Also, St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies Concerning the Statues can be helpful. The noted professor and bioethicist, Fr. John Breck has written extensively on these issues in his books: The Sacred Gift of Life: Orthodox Christianity and Bioethics; God With Us: Critical Issues in Christian Life and Faith; and Stages on Life's Way: Orthodox Thinking on Bioethics. They are very helpful. There are numerous other articles on his website. I’d also recommend The Mystery of Death by Nicholaos P. Vassiliadis.

In conclusion, thank you very much for this opportunity. You may hear another interview with the authors at: Ancient Faith Radio here.

The Revolting Funeral Industry

I recently read this article and then came across a short promotional video done by a "funeral professional" on helping you to choose the right casket. Both were ghastly, of course, but the video deserves some kind of prize for being such a perfectly gruesome example of everything in the American funeral industry that everyone--from Jessica Mitford to Evelyn Waugh--has rightly and mercilessly criticized and satirized over the years.

In the video a prim woman in soft lighting talks in carefully modulated tones, with schlocky music in the background, about different caskets you can buy, carefully highlighting only two types: expensive hardwood and more expensive metal ones. (No Jewish pine boxes for her!) Her voice was flat as she discussed the wooden options, but when she came to steel, and still more to copper and bronze ("semi-precious metals"), her voice rose and pace quickened, as though salivating at the prospects of higher profits on these meretricious models. Then she started in on the "personalization features" including "Lifesymbols," a trademarked term that would seem to include a variety of tacky baubles to glue to the outside of your box to reflect your (dread word) "lifestyle." (Will the worms give pause, before doing their work, to contemplate with suitable admiration your emblazoned fetish for motorcycles, baseball, Elvis, or whatever?) Only think what deliciously satirical fun Waugh, who saw relatively tame examples in 1950s California of American funeral practices, could have had with such rich offerings from today's industry! But it is entirely of a piece with so much of what passes for "normality" in North American funeral practices today as anyone who has had recent experience with them will readily attest.

How refreshing, then, to read J. Mark and Elizabeth J. Barna, A Christian Ending: a Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition (Divine Ascent Press, 2011), xiii+169pp.

Unlike me, these authors (both Orthodox Christians: Mark is a deacon in the Orthodox Church of America) have enough virtue to keep any polemical and satirical impulses firmly in check, and note in their introduction that they are not writing an "indictment or condemnation" of the funeral industry, nor a theological manual about death but, as their subtitle suggests, a practical handbook on how to face death in its most unvarnished form: by caring for a person at the time of death, and by washing, dressing, transporting, praying over, and ultimately carrying to the church and then cemetery the bodies of those who have died. And they have done just that with an admirable detail that provides enough information without being too gruesome or gratuitous, retaining a certain level of sober restraint and dignity. This book should be required reading for all Christians who still remember that caring for the dead is one of the so-called corporeal works of mercy. 

Even more impressive, the authors have included aspects of Orthodox theology around death, and generous excerpts from Orthodox liturgical texts, but have written their book in such a way that it is never off-putting to non-Orthodox Christians. It is ecumenical in the best sense, and should appeal to a wide range of Christians who wish to regain control over dying, death, and burial by turning back the tide of cloyingly treacly euphemisms, monstrously over-priced caskets, and the whole revolting racket that is the modern funeral industry. Indeed, there is much here that even non-Christians, interested in a more "green" option for death and burial, will find beneficial. There is no shying away here from the fact that death is part of life, and works best when we do not contaminate corpses--and then land and water-tables--with dozens of carcinogenic chemicals for cosmetic purposes. The body is ordained to return to the earth whence it came, and there is no need to delay or deny this process or to be squeamish about it. Much of this reminds me of the treatment of death in rural Greece, as documented in Juliet du Boulay's lovely book Cosmos, Life, and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village on which I have commented previously.

While being respectful of the fact that some people may still wish to involve a funeral home in some or all of their arrangements, the Barnas demystify the process in such a way that the reader has a good sense of how to simply bypass funeral homes entirely. With some leg-work, you can ensure that you never turn the body over to strangers but tend for it yourself from death to burial if you have the skills and community support, ideally from your parish which, if organized in advance, can help in any number of ways, including especially keeping vigil and praying the Psalter over the body around the clock. Many will tendentiously try to tell you--often using threatening pseudo-legal language--that you "must" be embalmed, or "must" be buried in a vault, or "must" have a coffin, but in most cases across the country there are no such requirements and those telling you otherwise will usually back down if they realize you know what they are talking about and will not be intimidated or bullied into spending $7000-10,000 or more, as many do on the "average" funeral. 

The authors reflect, in a very accessible and conversational style, on their own experience caring for the dead over the years, and from that experience are able to offer many helpful practical guidelines. They also include a useful reference list to books and websites useful in obtaining such things as burial shrouds, incense, oils for anointing, liturgical texts, and information for burial of war veterans in the United States. In addition, an appendix includes sample forms you can fill out detailing how you want your body handled, and how you want your funeral to proceed. Anyone who wants to take control of one's own arrangements will find much that is useful in  A Christian Ending: a Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition, and I  commend it to all those so interested.