An interfaith gathering in the United Kingdom on May 15 helped dedicate the country’s largest woodland burial park.
Green burials — ranging from simply foregoing embalming to home funerals, woodland burials and sea reef memorials — are becoming increasingly popular, with good reason. To start with, embalming uses chemicals that pose health risks to morticians and which can seep into ground water, and the casket industry uses a tremendous amount of lumber, copper and other metals every year.
Much as many of us struggle against it, death is a natural part of life. No amount of body preservation, concrete grave liners or [...]
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We are a part of the world around us. Our physical bodies ground us and ensure our place in our own ecosystem. But with so many distractions, conveniences and demands on our time and attention, it’s too easy to fall into ignoring our bodies — one of my bad habits has been vegging out on the couch with the television on when I’m feeling tired, instead of reaching for a book or just going to bed. There’s more to keeping kosher than simply avoiding bacon or not mixing meat with dairy products. There are laws about what kinds of animals can be consumed, and strict requirements on their slaughter. There are rules about the baking, freezing and other preparation of foods. In 1992, a Native American shaman recommended that I gather several pounds of stones and put them into a bag — and then hold this bag in my lap when I meditated. This was to ground me — literally — and to help get me out of my head and into my body, to more consciously and deeply feel my connection to the Earth. As part of my Jewish conversion process — and also out of my own curiosity — I recently read Arthur Green’s “Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow.” There’s a great deal of food for thought in these pages — including an entire chapter on “Kabbalah for an Environmental Age.” One passage in particular that struck me was: As our cities have grown larger, we have worked hard to distance ourselves from one another — compartmentalizing our lives through fences, apartment blocks and gridlocked cars. Even as we are in increasingly close physical proximity, we have grown more suspicious of each other. We isolate ourselves, not getting to know our neighbors, hoarding our resources and supplies for our own use, telling ourselves we definitely don’t need anyone else to get by. |
  Valhalla: A YA urban fantasy romp through the Pacific Northwest with Norse gods, hungry Berserkers, a teenaged witch, a mystical tree and even some Voodoo Doughnuts!  |
Jennifer Willis
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Copyright © 2012 Jennifer Willis - All Rights Reserved |
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