Family Tree do not just ‘do’ humanist funerals or green burials! Not a recent development, but brought home by the three most recent funerals we have arranged.
Today we had an extraordinarily beautiful – even exciting – high church funeral in Tewkesbury Abbey. The service was genuinely sincere, heartfelt and wonderfully ornate with a full – and fabulous – choir, incense and full complement of high ranking clergy, who followed the coffin out to the car in the rain to say farewell to one of their own. The brown cardboard coffin had been in the Abbey overnight for an organ recital and choir rehearsal, and was covered with messages written on by those attending.
Earlier in the week, at the marvellous St Lawrence Church in Stroud, we helped a family organise a farewell that was more Eulogy that Liturgy – and which was completely inclusive of ‘all faiths and none’; we were proud to know that this was not just possible, but was embraced and made even more beautiful by the huge part played by the church.
The previous week we helped with a funeral for a churchwarden at Barnsley Church; the exuberantly flower decorated woven coffin was brought in by an old horse and wagon, and – again – the most generously inclusive and broad-minded of services that left no faith or set of beliefs out in the cold.
The times they are indeed changing.
