The New Orleans funeral reminds us that grief is a burden that can be shared
vox.com
The New Orleans funeral reminds us that grief is a burden that can be shared
secular burial customs and adopting secular attitudes about bereavement—including the larger culture’s tendency to underestimate the power of grief and the impact of loss. Death itself has become something of a stranger.
Anita Diamant • Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead, and Mourn as a Jew
Taylor emphasizes that the loss of loved ones is the experience that is hardest to bear in a secular age:
Martin Hägglund • This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
Grief is love. How can we hold this grief without holding each other? To bear witness to this moment of undoing is to find the strength and spiritual will to meet the dark and smoldering landscapes where we live. We can cry.
Terry Tempest Williams • The Pall Of Our Unrest
There’s a lot of alienation; a lot of disaster porn. We need grieving rituals so we can go through our despair together, so we can face the losses we know are coming.
Andrew Boyd • I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor
We didn’t ask to be alive at this time in history. We didn’t ask to be responsible. But here we are, and we must find a way to live with what we know is coming. And, whether we find ourselves hopeful, hopeless, or something in between, we must find a way to act. In fact, maybe all our grieving has a secret purpose: