Death: Where do we find meaning?

This post is more of a dialogue that has been going on in my head over the past few days. It is the most like a journal entry of anything else that I've posted here and departs from my previous practice of mostly putting information out here. Some of my friends at times encourage me to share my thoughts and opinions on various topics and to step out of the teacher mode. Here is an example of that. It feels garbled and unresolved. I'm okay with this ambiguity. I welcome your comments and thoughts so send them to me as a comment to this posting.

A few days ago I heard an interview on the radio with Lisa Takeuchi Cullen about her new book, Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death. A recent review says this of the book, "This intriguing survey of America's rapidly mutating funeral customs probes the one force mightier than death: consumerism. Journalist Cullen explores the innumerable ways in which funerals are being personalized, publicized, economized, commercialized, trivialized and, perhaps, humanized. Among the many offbeat memorials she unearths are funerals with Hawaiian, tango or Harley-Davidson themes, as well as beer-themed caskets, eco-friendly funerals, "human diamonds" manufactured from a loved one's ashes, and a Colorado town that celebrates a do-it-yourself cryonics pioneer with its Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival, now a major tourist attraction" (Publishers Weekly).

During the interview there was a caller who shared her experiences being a part of funerals for skydivers and who related a story of doing a jump the day after the "church" funeral. This day-after jump was coordinated with a release of glitter mixed with flour done to create a brief sparkling cloud intended, I believe, to symbolize the ashes and transformation of the caller's deceased friend and fellow jumper. She described it as a brief but poignant moment for her and her fellow skydivers. I heard all of this as I have been reflecting on the death of my friends' son last Friday after an 11 month struggle with childhood leukemia. Another friend and colleague, Paul, presided at the funeral service yesterday. (I am certain that he offered words filled with grace and mercy that are the Good News that we have to proclaim as the church.) As I listened to the interview about current practices related to death in our culture, I wondered where is the meaning in all of these practices and what does all of this say about life. At one point in her comments, Lisa Cullen suggested that we as a people are not afraid to talk about death.

I'm not sure that I agree with her assessment of that willingness. I will concede that we are happy to talk about the elements that the reviewer in Publishers Weekly highlights. However, those elements seem to me to be our efforts to talk around the issues of death. Where are the questions that children are more than willing to ask but that we seem unwilling to ask or to which we fail to offer any response: What happens at death? What happens after death? Where is God in all of this? The fight over Terri Shiavo's death over a year ago represents, for me, our unwillingness to face these issues. Maybe it is that we are willing to talk at the surface of the issue of death but that we are unwilling to plumb its depths?

Do we not have the tools to engage this exercise? Does the tradition of which we are a part prevent us from crossing certain boundaries of exploration? Are we afraid of the answers? Is it just too much of an abyss in which to stare? Where and how do we find meaning in death?