Thoughts on the memorial service

[crowdog66]

The service went well. Very, very well. The family and friends were greatly pleased, and the deceased may have a had a hand in one or two events that occurred during the service. More on that later.

The general reaction from the mass of mourners was also positive. They got right into the "hail and welcomes" during the ritual and most of them came up to burn a piece of flash paper as an offering, and afterwards several of them remarked that they were pleasantly surprised by their first encounter with a Wiccan ceremony, and asked respectful questions. I even got to meet the owner of the funeral chapel, Neil Bardal, who it turns out is a Lutheran and a Mason and spent a few minutes with me as I waited for my cab chatting about "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons", which he highly recommends. Even the lady in the back serving coffee asked about the ceremony, because she could hear parts of it where she was working and had never heard anything like it before!

Right now, I am tired and very satisfied. I think I acquitted myself quite well, and as far as I can tell I did exactly what the family needed -- sent the deceased on her way in a reverent manner that brought them closure. The best friend of the deceased, who is also Pagan, seems determined to look me up again when she comes to visit Winnipeg next summer -- a contact I would welcome, since she struck me as an intelligent and pleasant person.

More later.

Comments

[ravyne-hawke.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I am so glad the ceremony went well. I imagine though that you are now exhausted from it.

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Do Not Read the "Da Vinci Code". It reads like a badly written fanfiction. I've read the damn thing twice, and it's anNOYing: Tissue-paper thin characters (Robert Langdon is a goddamned Marty Stu), stilted dialogue, urplish descriptions, lack of research (He got the actual procedure involving detecting traces of blood with a black light *dead* wrong: you're supposed to spray the area with Luminol first and *THEN* use the black light; and another more laughable error involved his describing a painting that's on a large wooden board as being painted on canvas)... plus he basically took (dis)information out of Baigent and Lincoln's "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and stuffed it into a loose narrative. And the way he falsely portrayed the Catholic lay/religious movement known as Opus Dei made me want to hunt Dan Brown down and beat him over the head with a copy of St. Jose-Maria Escriva's "The Way".

[dark-puck.livejournal.com]

To contradict MR, above, I do recommend the DaVinci Code. I just like it. ^_^