Bring out your Dead

PH sent THIS to me.

our archaic post mortem traditions

I LOVE when people use the term "archaic" because what it really means is that they WISH to criticize something but really have no logical means of doing so and thus appeal to the completely illogical notion - albeit much adored today - that something old is something at least unnecessary and at worse bad. It's quite laughable.

You will note that every "disposal" method starts with cremation. Clearly this person is a tool of the anti-environment conglomerate, oil industry, and military-industrial complex. (AKA a republican.)

The next time someone asks why we Orthodox prefer not to cremate and you haven't the time to express our deeply theological notions of personhood and the unity of both flesh and spirit, why not just tell them we are striving to stop the coming global catastrophe of global warming. Odds are you will find a much more sympathetic audience with the latter than with the former explanation.

Comments

Mimi said…
Yeah, my sister wants to make my mother into a diamond. Shudder.

Bury me, oh please!
fdj said…
Well Mimi, if your sister is of the proper persuasion, you can just tell her how much CO2 is expelled when a body is cremated.

Talk about rising sea levels and dying polar bears...all because you wanted to turn mom into a pretty rock.
layne (herman) said…
The only request my Mom has ever made is that we do not photograph her after she dies.
Mimi said…
You know, I'm pretty environmental, but I'm not sure she is. I'm pondering a sudden anti-cremation movement in the Green scene.

Of course, it kind of creeps me out more thinking of all those ashes scattered in places I swim and such.
Mr. G. Z. T. said…
And remember, when talking to liberalists, it's not just that the polar bears die, they drown after swimming valiantly for miles looking for the next ice floe! But man that reminds me, I need to get married soon just to make sure that if I should die suddenly I get buried appropriately, as God ordained, with a proper funeral, because if it were left to any of my relatives, well, bless their hearts, they mean well but they're Protestants so they don't believe anything in particular about the body and have sold out to modernity so they'd try to embalm me or something. I think they'd be sensitive enough to my sensibilities [ie, the Law of God] to realize I'd need an Orthodox funeral, but one can't be sure! But, at the very least, I can know with certainty that the only one that would conceivably consign me to the flames is God Himself.

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