08.11.22 | Faith | by Jim Merritt
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/li-life/asking-clergy-religion-cremation-c76xbow4
From left: The Rev. Jaye Brooks, Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, Manhasset; Rabbi Shalom Ber Cohen, Village Chabad at Stony Brook; the Rev. Randolph Jon Geminder, St. Mary's Anglican Church, Amityville. Credit: UU Congregation at Shelter Rock; Chanie Cohen; Randolph Jon Geminder
Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-Apartheid icon who died last year, was reportedly cremated in a new process known as aquamation, which is believed to be an environmentally friendly way of using water to reduce the body to ashes. This week’s clergy discuss how cremation, in any form, is viewed by their faith.
The Rev. Jaye Brooks
Developmental minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, Manhasset
Cremation is a choice that many Unitarian Universalists make during their end-of-life planning. Unitarian Universalists come from an array of religious traditions and bring those traditions with them, so there are many who instead choose burial.
One of my most vivid memories is of a family with five adult children at the time of their father’s death. He had remarried after they were mostly grown. The children and their father’s widow decided to scatter his ashes into the ocean. The night before the memorial service, the widow — mourning the loss of the husband she loved and keenly aware of his children’s grief — tenderly shared out his ashes into five little ribbon-bound packages. Each child took a package, opened it and, weeping, scattered their father’s ashes into the ocean.
Afterward they embraced the widow warmly and with gratitude. She had not been their mother, but in that moment she had shown the love and compassion of a parent. For her, the sight of them scattering her beloved husband’s ashes was a comfort in the midst of her grief — as was seeing the beauty of the love that was still so alive in their family.