Should we mourn the slow death of the traditional funeral?

The soaring cost of ceremonies and an increasingly secular society mean that fewer than half of Britons now want a funeral, according to a study this week. This raises the question, what do they want instead? The answer — which anyone who watches daytime television will surely know — is a direct cremation.

Also known as a “takeaway funeral”, the rise of a cheap, no-frills cremation with no relatives in attendance started under lockdown, but has remained enduringly popular, now accounting for nearly one in five UK deaths. Costs are kept low by using out-of-the-way crematoria, often very early in the morning before traditional ceremonies with mourners and wreaths begin.

Read it all.

The untimely death of the funeral https://t.co/cT2HaZQjGU

— Finance News (@ftfinancenews) December 2, 2023

America’s mental-health crisis drove suicides to a record-high number last year.

Nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to suicide in 2022, according to a provisional tally from the National Center for Health Statistics. The agency said the final count would likely be higher. The suicide rate of 14.3 deaths per 100,000 people reached its highest level since 1941.

The record reflects broad struggles to help people in mental distress following a pandemic that killed more than one million in the U.S., upended the economy and left many isolated and afraid. A shortage of healthcare workers, an increasingly toxic illicit drug supply and the ubiquity of firearms have facilitated the rise in suicides, mental-health experts said.

“There was a rupture in our economic health and social fabric. We’re still experiencing the aftereffects of that,” said Jeffrey Leichter, a psychologist who connects mental health and primary care at Sanford Health, an operator of hospitals and clinics in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa.

Read it all (cited by my colleague Jonathan Bennett in his Sunday sermon).

More people in the U.S. killed themselves last year than ever before. “There was a rupture in our economic health and social fabric. We’re still experiencing the aftereffects.” https://t.co/6p3RIZnT7l https://t.co/6p3RIZnT7l

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 29, 2023

There is precious little assistance from the government for families who need a home health aide unless they are poor. The people working in these jobs are often woefully underpaid and unprepared to help a frail, elderly person with dementia to bathe and use the bathroom, or to defuse an angry outburst.

Usually, it is family that steps into the breach — grown children who cobble together a fragile chain of visitors to help an ailing father; a middle-aged daughter who returns to her childhood bedroom; a son-in-law working from home who keeps a watchful eye on a confused parent; a wife who can barely manage herself looking after a faltering husband.

Mr. [Frank] Lee finally found two aides on his own, with no help from an agency. Using the proceeds from the sale of his stake in a group of restaurants, including the popular Charleston bistro Slightly North of Broad, he pays them the going rate of about $30 an hour. Between his wife’s care and medical expenses, he estimates that he’s spending between $80,000 and $100,000 a year.

“Who the hell can afford this?” he asked. “There’s no relief for families unless they have great wealth or see their wealth sucked away.” He worries that he will run out of money and be forced to sell their home of more than three decades. “Funds aren’t unlimited,” he said.

Read it all.

Facing a severe shortage of aides and high costs, people trying to keep aging loved ones at home often cobble together a patchwork of family and friends to help. https://t.co/o7DgtCZFzp

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) December 4, 2023

So then this one and only God is not Wordless. And possessing the Word, He will have it not as without a subsistence, nor as having had a beginning, nor as destined to cease to be. For there never was a time when God was not Word: but He ever possesses His own Word, begotten of Himself, not, as our word is, without a subsistence and dissolving into air, but having a subsistence in Him and life and perfection, not proceeding out of Himself but ever existing within Himself. For where could it be, if it were to go outside Him? For inasmuch as our nature is perishable and easily dissolved, our word is also without subsistence. But since God is everlasting and perfect, He will have His Word subsistent in Him, and everlasting and living, and possessed of all the attributes of the Begetter. For just as our word, proceeding as it does out of the mind, is neither wholly identical with the mind nor utterly diverse from it (for so far as it proceeds out of the mind it is different from it, while so far as it reveals the mind, it is no longer absolutely diverse from the mind, but being one in nature with the mind, it is yet to the subject diverse from it), so in the same manner also the Word of God in its independent subsistence is differentiated from Him from Whom it derives its subsistence: but inasmuch as it displays in itself the same attributes as are seen in God, it is of the same nature as God. For just as absolute perfection is contemplated in the Father, so also is it contemplated in the Word that is begotten of Him.

—The Orthodox Faith, VI

Today, the Church remembers the witness of St. John of Damascus pic.twitter.com/KH64ZsF4rS

— Gage C. Garlinghouse 🦬 (@Acolyte_1) December 4, 2023

Confirm our minds, O Lord, in the mysteries of the true faith, set forth with power by thy servant John of Damascus; that we, with him, confessing Jesus to be true God and true Man, and singing the praises of the risen Lord, may, by the power of the resurrection, attain to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.

Today the Church of England commemorates John of Damascus, Monk, Teacher of the Faith, c.749

Image: John of Damascus pleading his innocence against the accusations of the Byzantine emperor. Panel from Milan Cathedral, now in the V&A (CC BY-NC-ND): https://t.co/5kBmUy1ZYu pic.twitter.com/nztxiWdesT

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) December 4, 2023

Thou who with thine own mouth hast avouched that at midnight, at an hour when we are not aware, the Bridegroom shall come: Grant that the cry, The Bridegroom cometh, may sound evermore in our ears, that so we be never unprepared to meet him, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Thaw In Progress. 3°C. Sheep in numbers. ( this one was taken yesterday afternoon) pic.twitter.com/3rzEdIvsf9

— Yorkshire Wolds Weather (@WeatherWolds) December 4, 2023

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

–Psalm 1:1-3

Na een koude nacht warmden de eenden zich aan het zonnetje op. Fijne maandag😀 #natuur #landschap #winter #ElstUt #Elsterbuitenwaard #zonsopkomst #mooieluchten pic.twitter.com/aOMfkVKy1F

— Tjark Dieterman (@DietermanTjark) December 4, 2023