Funeral Readings: a new series!
Introducing yet another monthly series: funeral readings. Some are sad, some are uplifting, some are comforting; there’s something for everyone here.
Readings are absolutely not a compulsory part of a funeral or memorial ceremony. Sometimes family members or friends desperately want to speak at their loved one’s funeral, but they haven’t got the wherewithal to write something themselves. Readings are a perfect stand-in: your emotions and feelings right there on the page ready for you to contribute.
Remember readings can be adapted – if your favourite reading is written for him, you can change it to her! If it’s written for Mum, you can change it to Dad or Grandma or Grandpa, whatever fits for you. I just make sure to introduce such a reading as an adaptation.
The Ship, by Bishop Charles Henry Brent
I’m starting this series with my all-time favourite funeral poem; I use it often at the end of funerals for people who thought they were going somewhere after death, that they would be reunited with loved ones. It was read at my great-aunt’s memorial and I’ve been in love with it ever since.
What is dying?
I am standing on the seashore, a ship at my side spreads her white sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand watching her till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says, “She is gone.”
Gone!
Where
Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says,
“She is gone”
There are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout:
“There she comes!”
And that is dying.