Spiritual Baptist Mourning

Painful as it may be, such experiences brings home the finality of death. Something deep within us demands a confrontation with death. A last look assures us that the person we loved is, indeed, gone forever.” (108) Cable finishes his essay by asking, Tim if his job ever depressed him. Tim in reply says, “No it doesn’t, and I do what I can for people and take satisfaction in enabling relatives to see their loved ones as they were in real life.” (108) After reading this essay I feel as though sometimes we don’t understand death so therefore we do not talk much about it. By reading about what goes on after your loved one dies and is sent to these places to be prepared and ready for burial, it helps to understand why morticians and funeral directors do what they do. Knowing that someone enjoys taking the responsibility in providing that comfort in a sorrowful time makes me appreciate these people in these occupations a bit

Mar G. Berg, Repitions and Reflections in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/18939/1/HumsWP-0110.pdf

Unlike a grave site memorial, which marks where a body is burried, roadside memorials shows where a person died abruptly and unpredictably. When we see one, we get curious automatically and ask what might have happened in that place. Perhaps the basic reaction that we give when we see a roadside memorial is enough to understand its purpose and tolerate its presence when we are on the road. However, Some of the usual arguments that people post in opposing the presence of these memorials are dangerous distractions for drivers, illegal displays of religious symbols and it constitute the taking of public property for private purposes (Tiernan, 2009). I would like to argue all these arguments as I believe that the relevance of memorials outweighs all these concerns.

The grieving that individuals experience with death is unique, but the main stages are universal across cultures (Axelrod, 2017). There are five stages of grief. Nicolas Wolterstorff’s story, Lament for a Son, addresses these five stages as he tries to find joy after the loss of his son. The meaning and significance of death in light of the Christian narrative is also addressed in the story. Having a hope of the resurrection can help comfort individuals in situations similar to Wolterstorff (Wolterstorff, 1978).

The living, the wounded, and the escaped of Deerfield had to get on with life. Tradition says that there was a mass burial in the town cemetery a sorrowful task for all that survived.

Burial Rites, a novel written by Hannah Kent is heavily based on story telling and the effect it has. Through the course of the novel, readers observe the significance story telling has for both the individual and the community. For an individual story telling can make the speaker feel empowered whereas for the community story telling’s main significance is the entertainment it provides. Since Kent’s purpose of Burial Rites is to tell the life journey of Agnes Magnusdottir in an ambiguous light, story telling also becomes important for the reader.

The avid romantics include the “’McCandless pilgrims’” (Moss) - a term used to describe the individuals who travel to the bus in Denali. The word “pilgrim”, however, suggests much more than traveling to said place, it implies a follower journeying to

Death is a part of life and eventually everyone on this earth will experience it. Nurses play an important role in death. Mourning the death of a loved one is something that almost everyone will experience in this lifetime because it is a natural response to death. Bereavement, grief and mourning are all effected by one’s culture, religion, the relationship with the deceased, personality, and how the person died.

Death has always been and will be a topic that just a few want to talk, but since time immemorial man has worshiped their dead, and this is reflected in the various rituals and forms of burial. The anguish of death has been considered the deepest anguish of man. Death is the inevitable companion of life, is the final stage. It can occur at any age, suddenly or after a long illness. Despite knowing that someday we will have to die the death of a loved one is a terrible fact, very difficult to accept, that affects everyone around the deceased person. When the link with the deceased breaks, the suffering is so great, that they put into question the fundamentals of being, of human existence and our deepest beliefs, affecting significantly the basic family and social relationships.

During the following paper, I will be analyzing in the book “Lament of a Son” by Nicholas Wolterstorff, where the author interprets his traumatic recollection of the death of his 25-year-old son on a climbing accident, and how he was able to appease his grief based on his faith in God. Consequently, I will be identifying the 5 stages of grief, how the author finds joy after his loss, the meaning of death in the light of the Christian narrative, and how the hope of resurrection play a role in comforting the author.

. . . Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying

(they dismantle the circle and alter). Other rituals include: dedication, initiation, handfasting, parting of ways, wiccaning, and funeral ceremonies.

The article, “Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping” by Nancy Scheper-Hughes is about mothers in the Alto do Cruzeiro and how the mothers take the death of an infant. The mothers have been thought not to morn for their babies and to not become attached. They do this because the high rate of mortality because the infants are left at home while the mother is at work. No one is there to tend for the babies and the mother cannot take the babies to work with them. No funerals are done with the death of these babies some of the babies never even got a name because the mothers are thought not to get attached to the child until they know the child will survive. This is all due to the malnourishment in the children because the mothers are in poverty

Often, literal commands of Jesus such as pilgrimages have two and three fold benefits. Besides the very physical connections with the sacred that they offer arriving at places of sacred history, pilgrimages are also a form of penance for sins. Because of the sacrifice of time, money, and risk to make these pilgrimages, best seen by Kempe's outrageous devotion in leaving behind her life and family for long periods of time, pilgrimages assist in erasing sins in ones life. Another reason that Margery and medieval Christians would embark on these pilgrimages is for the reverence of saints and their relics that they would visit. The Middle Ages emphasized an important connection to the lives of past saints believing that the saints still had power to intercede blessings into the lives of religious people on Earth. Where Margery is set a part from common laity, during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem she receives a special spiritual gift of “cryings” that she can not control when religious emotion comes over her. Describing these outbursts, the author of her autobiography says, “The crying was so loud and so amazing that it astounded people…” (Windeatt, 104). It is assumable that emotional experiences upon pilgrimages of either laity or monastics to such places as the Holy Land would be common, however that people were

The fear I held as a child that my body would become a vessel for other souls to enter was intensified. This was my first impression of my first time in a cemetery and I was not off to a good start. As I grabbed a map to find my way around, I began to dread the walk through the cemetery and having to see all the lives lost, especially those who lost their lives before they even really began. However, to my surprise, as I made my way through the graveyard this feeling of sadness slipped away. The sun began to shine through the clouds of gray and illuminated both the cemetery and my mood. I was delighted to notice that many of the tombstones I encountered read that these lives that were lost were not taken too soon. Most of the people had lived over eighty years and were buried next to fellow family members who also lived just as long. It was nice to see that many people were laid to rest next to family so they wouldn’t have to enter the next life