In Memory of Bev
For those who knew Bev - or for any who care to read about a life well lived and the green funeral that marked its ending.
Before she died, my dear friend, Bev Playle, asked me to give her eulogy.
As she faded, I helped organise her green burial and devised the committal.
We had walked through so much of life together and in her death she gifted me with the trust to represent her when she could no longer do so for herself.
Thank you Bev for sharing so deeply with me all the important things of life. I will miss you.
Bev wanted a green burial and we were greatly helped in this by the funeral directors Natural Endings in Todmorden. She was buried in a cotton shroud on a wicker stretcher on an organic farm in Settle, Yorkshire.
The Burial
Welcome
We have been personally invited here today by Bev to witness and take part in the burial of her body.
This is the time when we say goodbye to the physical form that we knew as Bev.
We hope that we will leave here today with a sense of completion, that we have done the right thing for the woman we love and have come here to honour.
We are here to participate in the mystery of death and to share the sorrow that accompanies the disappearance of a loved one.
It is right to grieve. Grief and Love are sisters. There is no love that does not contain loss, because all will pass, and no loss that does not remind us of the love we carry for what we once had.
Bev and her body
spoken by the bier
Here is Bev’s body. It has served her well. It was the form in which we knew her. Her body was an integral part of who she is.
It formed her and she formed it. Through her body Bev was born into a loving family, she became a daughter, a sister. As she grew older, she made choices and her body was the vehicle that allowed her to live out those choices.
Though her body she gave birth to 2 children and loved and nurtured 4. It enabled her to love John over many years, to work and write and laugh and walk and enjoy deep friendship and seek God and all the things that we are going to remember at the celebration service in a few weeks time.
This body was the vehicle of life that Bev had, to experience the love and joy and wonder that is available to us on this earth. Bev was good at using the body well to seek and enjoy and revel in the good that life has to offer.
Until the point of her death, Bev and her body were inseparably intertwined. You didn’t know one without the other. Bev expressed herself through her body and her body nurtured and enabled the wonderful person we knew as Bev.
Now the bond had been broken.
We are sad that Bev is no longer with us in this form, because this is the way we knew her.
We know that we can’t go on forever. It is in the natural order of things that for something new to come into being, the old has to die. We may feel that Bev wasn’t old enough yet, but we don’t get a choice in these matters
The person, or soul, or essence of Bev has left and this is now a shell.
We have faith that all that was good in Bev, and there was lots, has been taken into the foundation of goodness and love, which we know as God.
No love is ever lost. It is there, in Divine Love, without the limitations of the body that we can know, even as we are fully known. St Paul says “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”
We didn’t want her to go so soon, but she is still with us in our memories and in our aspirations, just as she is in the everlasting arms of love. We express that as being in Christ, in whom all things hold together.
Bev’s husband John read a letter he had written to her after her death
The body and the earth
spoken after the stretcher is moved to the graveside
Just as there was a fundamentally dependency between Bev and the body while she was alive here on earth, there is the same between the body and the earth.
As Bev couldn’t have existed without her body, so the body could not exist without the earth nurturing it. Just as Bev made choices the affects her body, we make choices that affect the vehicle that carries us, the earth.
This green burial was very important to Bev. She not only wanted a low carbon funeral, but she wanted her body to complete the cycle of life in a natural way.
Science tells us that nothing is destroyed, but everything is changed. The body is transformed into energy for new life. The atoms and molecules that made up Bev’s body go back into the soil, to sustain future life all over again.
This is why Bev wanted this to happen, because sustaining future life was very important to her. And she wanted to experience the co-mingling with the earth that is our birthright; for her body that had served her well to lie in the warm ground and ‘feed the worms’ as Bev expressed it. That is why there is no coffin or embalming so that the transformation can take place at the natural pace.
We come from the earth. The creation account in Genesis speaks of the Adam, the earthing, being formed from the Adamah the earth. There, in that ancient story of beginnings, the connection is established. It is a modern malady that we have forgotten this. We think of ourselves as individual beings and we have forgotten that our lives are intricately connected with one another, and all humans, all species, all the earth, the animals, the plants, the microbes in the soil. We are entangled with all of life and matter. We are participants in the glorious web of life.
Bev wanted her burial to be a symbol of the connection we share with the earth and with each other. And that we who are here today, the ones she picked out to share this moment, should not forget this.
So we are going to give back her body to the earth the sustains us all.
We offer back the body of Bev. It is our gift to the earth, to celebrate the life we share.
Move body into the Earth
spoken after the body is put into the grave
Now we commit Bev’s body to the ground. Traditionally we say ashes to ashes and dust to dust. With our current knowledge we may say quark to quark and electron to electron. As we give Bev’s body back to the earth to be recycled into the biosphere, we can be satisfied that we have done what Bev wanted.
We now have the opportunity to add our final farewells written on this rosemary. Bev loved poetry. Shakespeare reminds us that rosemary is for remembrance. We can can add our farewells to the body as we listen to the Lost Words Blessing.
People came forward in turn to toss their messages onto the body
Blessing
Taken from prayer book that Bev often used ‘The Celtic Wheel of the Year’ by Tess Ward
Praise you source of all love
Surrounded by those who have uncommonly loved and rest now from their labours.
Praise be for the light they left behind
May it continue to blaze here and spark generations of little lights making all the difference in this dark world.
Praise you that love can never be put out.
Adapted from a prayer from Pope Francis in Laudato Si
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognise that we are profoundly united with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, as we honour Bev and strive, as she did,
for, love justice peace, truth and beauty.
Go in love and peace - in the name of Christ
Amen
We went back to the barn and shared the food that we had all brought
John made a video of the burial. The song is called Lost Words Blessing by Spell Song
The Celebration Service was held two weeks later at St David's Church, Holmbridge, Holmfirth. It was attended by over 200 people. There were tributes from 3 friends and her sister, on behalf of her siblings, Simon her son on behalf of their 4 children and John her husband. The eulogy I gave follows
Flowers, beautifully done as always, by David Waterston
The Eulogy
Bev wanted her burial to be a symbol of the connection we share with the earth and with each other. She entrusted me to tell you about it.
In this past weeks and months, thinking about the end of Bev’s life, I have come to understand that nothing is ever lost, just changed, transformed. A body in the ground goes back to the elements from which it was made. Bev didn’t want anything to interfere with that process, so she was buried in a shroud, no preservatives applied to her body. Similarly, I believe this points to the the knowledge that no love is ever lost. It too is transformed. Somehow, we can’t know how, it is encompassed within eternal Divine love, that sustains the universe. This treasure in jars of clay, belongs in the eternal love that we call God: the fullness who fills everything in every way.
When Bev died, we were left with an empty vessel and on a sunny, but somewhat chilly day, we planted it in the ground. What does that final drama, that she planned, say to us about the woman we have come here to celebrate?
The song that you heard just now, was played as we dropped messages tied to rosemary into the grave. It has the words: ‘Walk the world with care my love and speak the things you see. Let new names take and root and thrive and grow’ How did Bev do that? How did she speak of the things she saw, how did she embrace ‘the new’?
She was creative. She practised her ability to write and perform. Using humour, satire, pathos and deep theological thought, she spoke eloquently of the things that make us fully human. Her writing and performing spoke to so many of us.
She nurtured relationships. Always having room for more people in her life. She valued people, treasuring long time relationships and welcoming new people into her life as if they known each other for a lifetime.She invested in people, from her early years in nursing to her community work in retirement, and all the social, work and church stuff woven in-between.
She loved nature. Walking, with or without the dogs, was one of her greatest pleasures and nourished her soul
But underlying all of that was the unseen, the years of soul work: the daily reading and prayer in one form or another, the times of quietness, of exposure to the natural world, the preparation of sermons and writing and performance; the exploration of books, poetry, Scripture and Celtic forms of worship. There, where her life was ‘hid with Christ”, is where she was enabled to live the life she lived.
It also allowed her to question, without fear, the tenets of faith that she had adhered to for most of her life. She had begun this journey, and we only ever just begin, of leaving certainty behind and finding a deeper, broader, more exciting and fulfilling place. A place where the sense that there is more and more to encounter grips you.
We have heard from Julie how Bev expressed that she wanted more. She wanted more of life, but it was not to be
In memory of Bev, which is what this service is, I’d like to consider how she would want us to live, we who do have more time. What would she want you to do with the time you have left, now that her time here is over?
One thing is to seek. Do the soul work. Ground yourself in whatever it is that trains your inner life in love and beauty, justice and peace. Don’t be afraid of asking difficult questions. Find someone to mentor you if that’s what you need.
The other thing is to become aware of what is yours to do at this present time. We are facing the most uncertain future in the history of humanity. There is no more normal. At our present trajectory, we are going to exceed the semi manageable target of 1.5. degree rise in global temperatures and are heading for, at least, a 2.7 degree rise. That’s not just a number, that’s catastrophic devastation for most of the planet. Find out for yourself.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
For each of us it will look different, but somehow the same, as we work together to hold back every fraction of a degree of warming, and as we do what we can to foster resilience for ourselves, our children, our communities.
This is not something you should do alone. You will be overwhelmed you tried, but the whole point is that it’s not about being alone as individuals but about being people who live together out of an understanding that we are intricately connected with one another, and all humans, all species, all the earth, the animals, the plants, the microbes in the soil. We are entangled with all of life and matter.
This is quite counter-cultural. Bev was one of those people who let this insight change the way she lived. At the funeral we considered how the body is our vehicle for living life. We have nothing else. So how we feed it, clothe it, transport it, warm it, use it to relate to other people, other species and the earth is our act of worship. Everyone worships whether they claim to be religious or not.
We don’t have to do it all at once, but we should each be continually looking to see what it is that we can do next to honour the Earth, our God given gift
Seek out a group of people, that you can relate to, that are taking this seriously. You’ll recognise them because they won’t shut up about it.
Learn with them the joy, wonder and awe of this beautiful planet that God said was good and very good and honours with presence.
Learn how to support each other though grief for what we are losing.
Learn courage, hope, resilience. There’s a lifetime’s work there.
When you leave here today, in remembrance of Bev, take another step. Maybe join something online to help you love the earth, World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Local wildlife trust; learn the names of birdsong and wildflowers; take a carbon audit to see how you can be a leader in lowering your carbon footprint; sign on online petition (or 2 or 3); challenge your MP, your workplace, your school, your church leaders for their actions or inactions; join a local sustainability group or eco church team. The list is endless. Only by being supported can you stand up for justice for the earth, and all its species, in the spaces you inhabit.
I make no excuses for turning this into a climate sermon. Bev emphatically wanted me to do this. She was frustrated that people ignored the warnings she posted. She wanted her final act, her funeral, to be symbolic of that which she held dear. She wanted her body to go back into the ground, to be recycled into the biosphere, to be transformed into energy for new life, because sustaining future life was very important to her.
You had a connection with Bev, that’s why you are here. We are here together, we have a connection with each other. Bev loved you. She wanted you to be aware, supported and prepared. She wanted you to engage in fullness of life, where the common good is more important than personal satisfaction, where we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in order to draw out love from others, where we understand our rightful place in the web of life. Some of us call that the kingdom of God
We’ve lost Bev’s eloquent voice on this, but let us magnify the echoes of her voice in this new world that is being formed
I’m going to finish with a prayer adapted from a prayer book that Bev used a lot: The Celtic Wheel of the Year.
Praise you source of all love
Surrounded by those who have uncommonly loved and rest now from their labours.
We remember Bev - Praise be for the light she left behind
May it continue to blaze here and spark generations of little lights making all the difference in this dark world.
Praise you that love can never be put out.
AMEN