A Christian ending: Death & burial

A Christian Ending by Mark Barna

A HANDBOOK FOR BURIAL IN THE ANCIENT CHRISTIAN TRADITION

https://www.achristianending.com/about

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12398723-a-christian-ending

A Christian Ending is a handbook for burial in the ancient Christian
tradition.  Whether you are a Christian or not, this book provides
details on how to legally prepare a body for burial, perform a vigil
and funeral. The book grew out of a life-long aversion to the American
funeral industry and the American cult of body preservation.  From an
early age the whole thing just seemed quite warped and very
un-Christian. In short, “it gave me the willies.” I always thought
that it would be much better to be “planted” among the roots of an old
oak tree than to have my remains pumped full of chemicals and sealed
in a metal box. It turns out I was right.

As Christians we are constantly seeking to know the truth of things.
Over the years we realized that the American funeral industry is built
upon a mountain of lies. Working in a hospital many years ago, I
learned that hospital personnel are trained to handle the death of
Jews much differently than they do Christians. I learned that Jewish
burial rituals are much closer to my idea of a proper burial than the
funeral industry would have us believe.

Knowing that the first Christians considered themselves to be Jews, I
surmised that early Christian burial was probably much the same. So
what happened to those traditions? A trip to the library enlightened
me. I learned that the American funeral industry is unique. In most of
the world burial is still a quite organic, natural part of family and
community life. Here we have turned it into a grotesque art form at
best, or a macabre cult of greed and profit at the worst.

One day in 2005, in a discussion with my parish priest I said, “I have
all this information on ancient Christian burial. Surely you can find
a seminarian who is looking for a thesis. Have him write a book.” His
response was, “No, you write it.” The first version was simply a step
by step description of how to prepare a body for burial with an
explanation of “why” written only with Orthodox Christians in mind.
This early version was circulated among friends and fellow Orthodox
Christians via photo copy.

While writing this first draft and working out details of the
“process” in our heads, tragedy struck. A good friend and parishioner
died suddenly and unexpectedly. He left three teenaged orphans. Our
church family quickly pulled together, donated a coffin, dug his grave
on a friends farm and prepared his body at the hospital morgue. During
this tragic time everything went “by the book”. This was also the
first time I signed for receipt of a body as “funeral director”. Since
then we have prepared numerous bodies of family, friends, parishioners
and perfect strangers.

The favorable reactions and suggestions lead us to rewrite the book to
broaden the scope to include other Christians who might not be
familiar with Orthodox Christian tradition and eschatology. This
version also got favorable reviews and we were encouraged to seek a
publisher. We then embarked on a third version to include anyone
interested in “natural”, “green” or “new age” burial in the potential
audience.

Still, we knew a book like this is not a profitable undertaking for a
publishing house and therefore it would probably never see the light
of day. We continued sending bound photocopies free upon request.
Finally, a copy found its way to the Monastery of Saint John of San
Francisco where Abbot Jonah (now Metropolitan JONAH) agreed to publish
it through Divine Ascent Press, the monastery imprint. We are very
much indebted to His Beatitude and the monks for all the work that
went into editing and printing this book.

In the beginning, we thought that people would just think that we are
nuts. To our astonishment, A Christian Ending is now in its second
edition and its fourth printing. After 15 years of travel for speaking
and workshops, we are slowing down. But our entire workshop is
available in podcast form on AncientFaith.com.

Obviously, as Orthodox Christians, we approach our death as we do our
entire life, as Christians. However, if you are not a Christian, you
will still find lots of valuable step-by-step information inside.


-- 
Stephen Hayes, Author of The Year of the Dragon
Sample or purchase The Year of the Dragon: 
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/907935
Web site: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail: [email protected] or if you use Gmail [email protected]