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shiva
We went to the shiva for Ray tonight. (The funeral was yesterday, so this was the first one.) They had a good-sized crowd, mostly members of their congregation (I assume). A few other SCA people were there.
I had failed to give some SCA friends a heads-up that there would be a short service there; I hope they weren't too uncomfortable. The service was actually longer than what I'm used to, for three reasons: (1) Reconstructionists include more liturgy than we do; (2) the leader was having the group do the "let's all read this passage together" thing in a number of places, and that's always slower than just one person reading; and (3) the leader threw in other commentary along the way.
After that was over we spent time talking with the family members. Esther seemed to be very glad that we were there. It sounds like Ray's last few days were frustrating but not painful. She seems to be coping ok so far, at least in front of other people.
One of the people I met at New Light a couple weeks ago was there, and I spaced on where I knew her from and had to be told. Oops. Context is everything, I guess. (She turns out to be a relative of an inlaw.)
The SCA household has a dinner scheduled for tomorrow night. Esther is in that household, so I was semi-expecting the dinner to be cancelled in deference to the shiva, but I haven't heard anything about it. So I don't know what our plans are for tomorrow evening at this point -- maybe going to the dinner and leaving early enough to go to the shiva?
I had failed to give some SCA friends a heads-up that there would be a short service there; I hope they weren't too uncomfortable. The service was actually longer than what I'm used to, for three reasons: (1) Reconstructionists include more liturgy than we do; (2) the leader was having the group do the "let's all read this passage together" thing in a number of places, and that's always slower than just one person reading; and (3) the leader threw in other commentary along the way.
After that was over we spent time talking with the family members. Esther seemed to be very glad that we were there. It sounds like Ray's last few days were frustrating but not painful. She seems to be coping ok so far, at least in front of other people.
One of the people I met at New Light a couple weeks ago was there, and I spaced on where I knew her from and had to be told. Oops. Context is everything, I guess. (She turns out to be a relative of an inlaw.)
The SCA household has a dinner scheduled for tomorrow night. Esther is in that household, so I was semi-expecting the dinner to be cancelled in deference to the shiva, but I haven't heard anything about it. So I don't know what our plans are for tomorrow evening at this point -- maybe going to the dinner and leaving early enough to go to the shiva?
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Of course, it helped considerably that there wasn't anything (at least not in those parts that had English translations) that I had theological problems with; I imagine it would be much more awkward for Jewish friends trying to respectfully attend a Christian memorial service.
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Yup. Been there; done that. :-)
There are parts in the Hebrew that would be problematic for those Christians who believe that Jesus is the only path to God. But that doesn't seem to be the majority Christian opinion today, and I don't think anyone in my immediate circle of friends believes that. So I've only gotten that recently from random street preachers and the like.
I was actually a little worried about the mini-sermon the leader gave where he talked about Jewish vs. Christian views of the afterlife. I bet he didn't know there might be Christians present who might disagree with his characterization of their view. In case you're wondering, in my limited experience that sort of commentary isn't typical at a shiva service. The funeral, sure -- but not the other services AFAIK.
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From what I could gather, that specifically spoke to experiences with friends (I don't know whether of the family or just one of the daughters) who had gotten really insistant about how important it was that he accept Christ as his savior before dying, which (understandably) had been fairly rattling. I honestly never interpreted his referece as an "all Christians" thing so much as a "some Christians" thing (which may reflect on being raised to automatically see Christian theology as a process with a lot of diversity, even among those of good faith, rather than an exhaustive set of static, universally-accepted answers).
His point (that what happens next is a mystery) is also an important one to me. My faith holds that fallible human beings cannot win God's grace on our own merits, and that Jesus (among many other things) served to pay the costs we therefore deserve to for our sin. And that this belief demands certain practices from me as a believer (which demands I have mixed success at meeting). However, I strongly believe it's presumptious - maybe perilously so - for those same, flawed humans to become too confident about how God will judge any particular individual. More pragmatically, I believe that the overemphasis in popular American Christianity on an afterlife (and, for similar reasons, "the end times") is spritually unhealthy, distracting from how we ought to be living in this life and, far too often, playing in a sensationalized way to the worst of pious vanity.
Of course, I was just celebrating matching Dawn Treader with a cusp of Magician's Nephew while entirely missing The Last Battle on the "Which Chronicle of Narnia Are You" Quiz the other day, so the "Left Behind" crowd have probably written me off anyway :-)