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ahhhhhh LOVE IT! beautiful
Sure, that’s nice. Trusting of the handles, too. But suitcases and shopping bags we carry like this; what, aside from our young children, do we carry and lift high onto our shoulders? Our dear dead – that’s who. So I’d counter this safe picture with my experience of the four sisters shouldering their youngest sibling’s coffin round the corner of Leckhampton church, staggering into the teeth of the January gale, high heels sinking into the turf, with half a dozen other family – old and young – each keeping a safe hand on the coffin, doubling up on the webbing… Read more »
Point taken, James. Very much.
From a purely practical point of view I can think of several Churches where the nave isn’t wide enough to do this.
I’m coming round — to a position of ambivalence. Thanks for that, NN. Great moniker.
There’s always a way, no matter how narrow the nave. Bit of fumbling, sure, but where’s there’s a will..
boom boom.
I’m with James on this. For some, the ordinary, shopping-bag-ness of the low-level carrying will feel exactly right, while for others, hoisting on high, for all the precariousness, is the only way. I recall being struck how strongly my brother felt that our father’s coffin should be shouldered.
It’s all part of the exploratory enquiry that must be our work: helping the bereaved to manifest, through gestures, the psychic environment that is right for them.
I’m worried, Kathryn, that carrying a coffin should be seen by men to be a man thing – like driving the car and mowing the lawn and all those other bloke things. So of course I am correspondingly worried that women might feel it is their place to accede. I am speaking as a feminist here. I want to see women, children and the old doing their bit, and I want it to be possible for them — to feel the weight, not just to reach up and touch. Inclusiveness is the thing — and James seems to demonstrate that… Read more »
Everyone has a different opinion on this (I personally prefer shoulder-high carrying) – but surely, the only opinion that really matters is that of the bereaved.
Of course, Maggie. Absolutely. And they must listen to each other and be sensitive to each other’s needs. There is a role for FDs here in exploring this with them.
[…] Respected voices don’t much like this arm’s length carrying, but I do. We don’t disagree, we just think differently. You can do that in Funeralworld. […]
a casket should alwas be carried onto a marae or into a church head first not feet first
Tradition has it that only priests are carried into a church head first, laymen always travel feet first… “Historical precedence provides that if the corpse is a layman, the feet are to be turned towards the altar. If the corpse is a priest, then the position is reversed, the head being towards the altar. The earliest reference to this is in Johann Burchard’s “Diary”. Burchard was the master of ceremonies to Pope Innocent VIII and Pope Alexander VI. A little-known custom also exists that both before the altar and in the grave, the feet of all Christians should be pointed… Read more »
So her Majesty Queen Elizabeth even though head of the Church of England gets carried in feet first