lydamorehouse | (Reply)

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Oh, I have, too. At least one of my grandparent's funerals (they blur, so I can't remember which) was saved by the Lutheran pastor in our family who was allowed to give a second homily that made us all weep with remembrance. Meanwhile, the actual priest who should have known them, because my grandpa was a deacon in the church and grandma was constantly there, just said some fill-in-the-blank nonsense. So, yes, we were lucky this time.

And, yeah, the other funny part about Communion was that even Margaret's daughter clearly didn't go to this church enough to know all the routines, because they had some special route you were clearly supposed to walk that they didn't, etc., which started everyone off wrong...that part would have also been hilarious if this wasn't a funeral, you know?

Ministers and pastors can do it right. We were incredibly lucky to have been recommended a very conscientious pastor for Ella's funeral. (Ella was our stillborn daughter.) This woman really, really listened to us and found a way to do one of the hardest funerals of all--one where there aren't stories of someone's life to share, etc. But, even though she was a UU who was Christian, she respected our wish not to have many (or any) references to any god or Heaven, though we gave her some alternative options such as the summer land--and we did say that Christians would be attending and we do have a god as well as a goddess, so... We had wanted to find a pagan minister, but we're such eclectics that we just weren't enough tapped into the community to find one. But Unitarians do have CUUPS (Convenient of UU Pagans) so they were close enough--and again, I have no regrets. She was incredible. Did everything right.