Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 206

Second step

When we first greet one another, it's clear that we're both trying a little bit too hard. We trade one too many "how are you"s. Conversation stutters and starts.

But soon we settle into a rhythm. He received the bedtime shema prayer I sent, and the small pamphlets about Jewish prayer and about forgiveness in Jewish tradition. I show him the JPS Tanakh I brought for him (though I won't be able to give it directly to him; I have to leave it with the corrections officer for inspection, and it will be forwarded to him with the evening mail) and the copy of Anita Diamant's book Choosing a Jewish Life. He seems surprised and grateful.

We talk a little bit about what the journey to choosing Judaism usually looks like. I describe the general course of study, the usual timeframe, the mikveh immersion. Ordinarily, I tell him, I would ask a potential Jew-by-choice to start coming to services and experiencing Jewish life in community, but that's obviously not an option for him until he's out of jail. He tells me he might be out some months sooner than originally anticipated, and that he can't wait to try services.

We chat about how the Christian sabbath day became Sunday, about what "kosher food" means (and doesn't mean), about a friend of his in the jail who is Catholic and enjoys friendly argument about scripture and prayer. I tell him that friendly argument is a very Jewish mode of Torah study, in certain ways. I tell him about the Jewish weekly lectionary, and show him the dog-eared page in the book which marks this week's Torah portion. He asks me what Jews think about Jesus, and we talk about some
different ways of understanding Jesus: as a Jew, as a teacher of Torah,
as a rabble-rouser, but not as divine.

I ask him about what holidays are like, in this local house of corrections. He tells me a little bit about Thanksgiving, about a fellow inmate who gathered a group of them to eat together and who said they were like his family. He tells me he's never connected with Christmas and doesn't anticipate that he'll miss it. I tell him about Passover -- he's never been to a seder -- and I wonder aloud whether I might be able to orchestrate a seder here.

Over the course of our hour, I learn a little bit more about what his life is like here. He tells me that more than anything else, it's like a retirement community in there. Little foam couches, tables where guys play cards, two televisions (with headphones for the sound.) It's really quiet, he tells me. Most of the guys are taking classes through the local community college. The place is empty enough that they closed down one of the pods and had to let several COs go.

There are only fourteen women in the local jail right now, he tells me, and I think: wow, what would it be like to be one of those fourteen? What an insular little community that must be. The communal dynamics must be fascinating, and probably not easy to navigate. While we're chatting, a man in orange walks through the visiting room and he and my inmate (who is wearing navy blue) smile and exchange greetings. The orange jumpsuit means he's still awaiting sentencing. The two of them knew each other, before.

I depart with a promise to provide a Jewish calendar, and to return in a few weeks with thoughts on what we might study together. I still don't know where this relationship will lead, but I feel blessed to have the opportunity to find out.

Three gratitudes

I'm grateful this morning for colleagues who pause our phone calls to make the blessing for Torah study, mindful that the words we're going to exchange are themselves Torah; who remind me to pay attention to the movements and signals of my own heart; who urge me to recognize and to honor both the act of stretching my comfort zone, and the act of remaining safely within it; who offer their own stories and experiences to match mine.

I'm grateful this morning for students who offer me the key to unlock their enthusiasm; who ad-lib interviews with Biblical characters, giggling wildly as they insert cows into scenes where, truth be told, cows were never meant to be; who earnestly ask permission to skip Hebrew this week so they can spend more time with the Torah story; who laugh and shout so loudly I know the whole building must be listening to their glee.

I'm grateful this morning for recordings of my beloved friends singing the morning prayers, with heart and harmony; for their presence, real with me again through the miracle of praying together across the miles and the months; for their reminder that I am most wholly the person I want to be when I take the time and space to enter into our liturgy, to be washed by its waves, to be rooted in its soil; for this ineffable togetherness.

Three responses to this week's Torah portion

As we enter into parashat Vayishlach, I wanted to share links to a few of the divrei Torah I've posted over the years which arise out of this week's portion:

Encounter, 2008, a Torah poem. "When Esau saw him he came running. / They embraced and wept, each grateful / to see the profile he knew better than his own..."

Beyond binaries, 2006. "Jacob earns the new name because he's open to transformation, but that transformation is neither instantaneous nor irrevocable; it's something he has to continue working at, a process rather than an endpoint. As a result, he's continually oscillating between his two sides, the part of him which lives in duality (Jacob) and the part of him which lives in continual awareness of the presence of God (Yisrael.) In a sense, his real new name is the back-and-forth between the two sides of who he is."

Blessing myself, 2010. "With whom did he wrestle? The text tells us that he was alone, and that he wrestled with a man. Jacob wrestled with himself: with the part of him that regretted cheating his brother, with the part of him that missed having a relationship with his twin, with the part of him that wanted a different ending to their story."

All feedback welcome, as always.

 

Rodger Kamenetz's the lowercase jew

A book of poems nine years old still deserves to be written about and to be read. This is true as a general statement, I think, though I'm saying it now with a specific title in mind: Rodger Kamenetz's the lowercase jew.

Maybe you know Rodger Kamenetz's book The Jew in the Lotus, the true story of the group of rabbis who went to Dharamsala, India, to meet with the Dalai Lama and offer him wisdom about surviving as a people in Diaspora. (When I first read that book, some 20 years ago, I remember thinking: wow, they took a poet along to tell the tale! I want to grow up to get that job.)

Maybe you know his The History of Last Night's Dream. (I interviewed him after that came out -- Dreaming with Rodger Kamenetz, Zeek magazine, 2008.) Or his more recent Burnt Books: Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav and Franz Kafka. But unless you're a lover of Jewish poetry -- which, given that you're reading this blog, you might be -- you may or may not know his poetry. And you should know it, because it's really good.

I read his The Missing Jew: New and Selected Poems years ago, I think shortly after getting out of college. (I thought I'd reviewed it somewhere, but can't seem to dig up a link; I guess I just wrote about it in my paper about what makes Jewish literature Jewish, back when I was getting my MFA at Bennington.) But somehow I failed to pick up a copy of the lowercase jew until this fall. Nu, the good news is, poetry ages well. So it came out in 2003 and now it's almost 2013 -- big deal. The psalms were written God-knows-how-long-ago, and we still read them, don't we?

This is a tight, rich, thought-provoking collection of poems. Sometimes it is funny. Sometimes it is dark. Often both at once. Here, take these lines, from the beginning of the title poem (which comes with the explanatory tagline T. S. Eliot stands before a heavenly court. A burlesque.):

THE PROSECUTOR:

T.S., I got to tell you the emes--
Bleistein here, pardon the cigar.
Remember me, palms turned out,
Chicago Semite Viennese?
Like I'm some kind of ape?
You didn't like my baggy pants.
Now I'm here to take your measure.

To prosecute is dreck, but I got assigned.
You think God don't have a sense of humor?
It's punishment for you, but also me.
I have to read these farkakta lines
You wrote about the Jews.

Read them out loud. Read the whole poem out loud. (Of course, to do that, you'd have to buy the book. Hint.) As the poem continues, Kamenetz, in the persona of Bleistein, skillfully skewers Eliot's antisemitism. The dialogue between the prosecutor, Eliot himself, and the judge is sharp, unflinching, and -- this is clunky but I'm not sure how else to say it -- never abandons the purposes of poetry in order to make a point. This isn't an exegetical essay, it's poetry. But it manages to say what a good critical essay on the subject would say, while also being considerably more enjoyable.

Here's a taste of another poem in an entirely different vein. This comes from the poem titled "Genesis 1:1":

When Gods were beginning to make
the alphabet of heaven and earth,
the wind ruffled the black waters
and the earth had no name or form.

We make impossible requests
of fundamental texts
searching in a vowel
that dissolves as we penetrate...

If you know the opening lines of Torah in Hebrew, you'll see echoes of bereshit bara Elohim in the opening of this poem. And of ruach Elohim m'rachefet al pnei ha-mayyim, the breath of God(s) hovering over the face of the waters. But I love the idea that in the beginning -- or when God was beginning, as I prefer to translate, and apparently Rodger does too -- what was created was not form but text. And yes, as interpreters, as readers, we do make impossible requests of our fundamental text (don't you love the sound of those words? again, read them aloud, roll them around in your mouth.) Isn't that part of what makes us Jews?

The poem about reading Eicha (Lamentations) on Tisha b'Av in the Altneushul in Prague is one I have resolved to share with my community next Tisha b'Av. The comparison of the crabbed Hebrew text to wheels of tiny spikes or stings, the text's recitation to a spinning of prayer wheels -- and the poem's closing lines and their echo of the closing lines of that painful and powerful piece of sacred text!

One more tiny excerpt, because I can't resist. This is from the poem called, simply, "Rye":

Inside a caraway seed, half forgotten,
a hint of pepper and peppermint
locked in a small black boat.
Inside a framework of pores -- breaths
of yeast -- the boats slip in
to their holes...

A hint of pepper and peppermint / locked in a small black boat. I wish I had written those lines. What a perfect description of a caraway seed. And the sounds! The repeated plosives of pepper and peppermint, the rhyme of hint and mint framing that line like parentheses, the living sense of the breaths of yeast which permit the boats to find their docks. And I won't spoil the last line of the poem for you, except to say that it made me laugh out loud.

You'll find the Holocaust in this collection, with its very specific horrors. You'll find Torah (Noah, Jacob, the tablets of the covenant -- and the broken tablets of the covenant, which Talmud tells us were carried along with the whole ones, as we even now carry the shards of those who came before us.) Modern poetry, to be sure: this collection is in conversation with Pound and Eliot and Ginsburg. You'll find New Orleans turtle soup alongside the red-and-white swirl of borscht. (As a Jew from the south who grew up eating some pretty peculiar things -- yep, turtle soup in New Orleans was one of them -- I love those facing pages.) And the final poem is a rhapsody which manages to remind me both of Tanakh and of Whitman.

This is a beautiful volume of poems. Pick it up and see for yourself.

Another one from the archives: Kol Nidre poem

This poem was first published in What Stays, my second chapbook of poems (Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Chapbook Series, 2002.) It has been used in congregations and independent minyanim during Kol Nidre services.

KOL NIDRE

I.

My people break our promises publicly.

We stand and say "Hey, God, you know,

you can't hold us to anything really,

I mean we're creation, right?" We declare

all vows, promises, and oaths

of the year to come -- all vows we're too silent

or too weak or forgetful to uphold --

null and void in advance.

We say, "God, you're listening, right?" We say,

"Don't worry, God. We still feel guilt."

We are like wild grapes.

We are beautiful, and we are sour.

Forgive us, and forgive

the stranger in our midst.

II.

In Stolpce, my grandfather's town,

some sons ran away, abandoned God.

Joined the army, splashed water

on bare faces, cooked pea soup with bacon.

Even they would gather once a year,

press their ears to the synagogue door,

whisper the Aramaic words and weep.

My grandmother's house in Prague

had a Christmas tree up to the ceiling.

When children said she'd killed their God

she said, "That must have been the Polish Jews."

For Kol Nidre she wore her new fur coat

and walked the cobbled promenade.

At eighty she still fasted, stood and swayed.

Once my Hebrew teacher stood a girl

in the trash because she wouldn't learn.

I came home bursting with new sounds

and imitated his accent at the dinner table.

I argued with our yardman, a Jehovah's Witness.

Later Eloisa chewed him out in Spanish:

didn't he know what Jewish meant?

III.

So that our vows may no longer be vows

we knock on our breasts with loose fists,

we speak an abecedarium of sins.

We know the disclaimer only lasts so long;

next year we'll be back with our court

of three, holding scrolls, looking solemn.

We know how foolish we sound

but the melody is old, and makes us cry.

A Blessing for the Thanksgiving Meal

American Thanksgiving is almost upon us! The ThanksgivingTrio [pdf])

A Blessing for the Thanksgiving Meal

by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat


Source of all being, we thank You
for the meal on this table before us:

for the earth from which this food emerged
and Your blessing which sustains that earth

for the hands which planted and weeded and watered
and tended animals with loving care

for the drivers who ferried ingredients to our stores
and the workers who stocked the shelves

for those who prepared these dishes
dicing and chopping and roasting

and for the loved ones whose memory we cherish
when we recreate or adapt the foods they once made

may we receive this meal as a gift
and offer the gratitude of our hearts in return

and may the abundance which we enjoy
spur us to care for those who need

Thank You for this food
and for our togetherness on this precious day.

Prayer for the Children of Abraham / Ibrahim

For every aspiring ballerina huddled
scared in a basement bomb shelter

    For every toddler in his mother's arms
    behind rubble of concrete and rebar

For every child who's learned to distinguish
"our" bombs from "their" bombs by sound

    For everyone wounded, cowering, frightened
    and everyone furious, planning for vengeance

For the ones who are tasked with firing shells
where there are grandmothers and infants

    For the ones who fix a rocket's parabola
    toward children on school playgrounds

For every official who sees shelling Gaza
as a matter of "cutting the grass"

    And every official who approves launching projectiles
    from behind preschools or prayer places
   
For every kid taught to lob a bomb with pride
And every kid sickened by explosions

    For every teenager who considers
    "martyrdom" his best hope for a future:

May the God of compassion and the God of mercy
God of justice and God of forgiveness

    God Who shaped creation in Her tender womb
    and nurses us each day with blessing

God Who suffers the anxiety and pain
of each of His unique children

    God Who yearns for us to take up
    the work of perfecting creation

God Who is reflected in those who fight
and in those who bandage the bleeding --

    May our Father, Mother, Beloved, Creator
    cradle every hurting heart in caring hands.

Soon may we hear in the hills of Judah
and the streets of Jerusalem

    in the olive groves of the West Bank
    and the apartment blocks of Gaza City

in the kibbutz fields of the Negev
and the neighborhoods of Nablus

    the voice of fighters who have traded weapons
    for books and ploughs and bread ovens

the voice of children on swings and on slides
singing nonsense songs, unafraid

    the voice of reconciliation and new beginnings
    in our day, speedily and soon.

And let us say:

    amen.

 

Notes:

On "every aspiring ballerina huddled," see Twenty minutes in a Tel Aviv bomb shelter, Jewschool.

On children distinguishing bombs by sound, see A message to Israel's leaders: Don't defend me – not like this, Ha'aretz.

On "mowing the grass," see Israel, Gaza, and the patterns of the past, Washington Post.

On "projectiles / from behind preschools or prayer places," see Dealing with Hamas's human shield tactics, Jerusalem Post.

"Soon may we hear..." is a reference to the final blessing in the set of Sheva Brachot / Seven Blessings recited at every Jewish wedding.

 

This is meant to be prayed in community as a responsive reading.

As a mother, as a human being, as a Jew, and as a rabbi, this prayer/poem is the best articulation I can offer of what my heart and soul are feeling right now. I pray for God to heal the hearts of all who suffer: Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and non-Jews, "us" and "them," combatants on both sides, those who fear on both sides, those who mourn on both sides, those who benefit from the existing systems in place and those who struggle within those systems. Please, God, speedily and soon.

I welcome comments. (If you are a new commenter, please read the VR comments policy before chiming in.) And all are welcome to share and to use this prayer in your community if it speaks to you, as long as you preserve its origin / attribution.

A pdf file is available for download if that's helpful:
PrayerForChildrenOfAbrahamIbrahim [pdf]

A visit to Sagrada Familia

Gaudí's Sagrada Familia is amazing. I've never seen a cathedral like it. And I have seen a fair number of cathedrals. (I guess it isn't technically a cathedral; it won't be home to a bishop. But what else can one call such a grand and soaring Christian religious space?)

Beams of light.

It's a bit as though an art deco - modernist worship space had been built in Tolkien's mythical Lothlorien. I think it's the giant soaring columns modeled to look like plane trees, holding up the exquisite skylight-riddled roof, which put me in mind of golden elvish Mallorn trees. It's almost as though the columns (several different shapes and diameters, each made of a different stone) grew organically from the floor to create the ceiling. Which I guess would be one explanation for the wonderful and whimsical finials on the roofs which look like unearthly fruit.

Seen from outside.

It is enormous. Mind-bogglingly enormous. It can hold thousands of people. In the way of cathedrals, it has already taken well over a century to build. Most of the main building is complete, and there are three extraordinary towers (into which visitors can ascend) -- though the plan calls for a total of eighteen towers, so there's a lot more left to build. When Gaudí died in 1926, only a quarter of the project was complete.

Pillars and light.

There are spiraling staircases and great openings and amazing light. There are sculptures which tell stories. At the top of the many spire / tower roofs there are the kind of giant and fanciful mosaic fruits I saw on the roof of a Gaudi-designed mansion the day before. One side of the church (known as the Glory facade) has exterior pillars which appear to rest on a giant tortoise and a giant turtle -- symbols of land and sea. This is a structure which praises God through lifting up aspects of nature, aspects of creation, in their beauty.

Windows.

When I was there on a Friday morning, they were piping in choral music which completed with the sounds of construction continuing overhead. As I sat in a chair in the huge and spacious nave, and quietly davened some morning blessings to myself, I heard the strains of Duruflé's "Ubi Caritas," one of my very favorite Christian sacred pieces to sing. Where there are charity and love, there, one finds God -- yes indeed.

Crane at work.

I wandered the building in a daze, dodging other tourists who, like me, were attempting to capture the ineffable on film. I took an elevator up to the top of the tower named for the Passion, and marveled at the views of Barcelona, and then slowly, slowly, walked the 425 steps back down to the ground. I trailed my fingers along the narrow staircase as I went, and marveled at the work of all of these combined human hands.

Light on columns.

I always love visiting sacred spaces. Even if they're not "mine" in the sense of being Jewish sacred spaces, I feel an affinity for them because they are someone's idea of holy; because they are built for community and prayer; because they are meant to reflect a tiny fraction of the glory of the Infinite. I'm really glad to have spent a morning in this one.

(For more images from our few days in Spain, including a few more of Sagrada Familia and a few of a mansion designed by Gaudí called Palau Guell, here's my Barcelona photoset on Flickr.)

One from the archives: morning blessings poem cycle

Around 2002-2004 I worked on a series of variations on some of the traditional morning blessings. These were among my first experiments with creative work meant to be experienced both as prayers and as poems. This poem cycle includes the prayers known as Elohai Neshama, Asher Yatzar, Nishmat Kol Chai, and Baruch She'amar. The "Asher Yatzar" poem was first published in Zeek magazine, spring/summer 2005.

 

ELOHAI NESHAMA

My God, my

own, my breath

that you have given me

is pure

she is clean, clear

like mikvah waters

the spark

which makes me more

than automated clay,

than cells

sprouting cells

is holy

neshama:

it's feminine

no matter whose,

women and men

and those blessed

in-between

what's gendered

female is what

creates: this

drop of divine

breath that breathes

new life through us

let what I create

in the world,

my God,

be as pure

as Your breath

in me

 

ASHER YATZAR

Blessed is the breath of life

who formed and animates this body,

its myriad organs and tissues,

protrusions, bones, and sinews;

winter skin so dry my calves rub bloody,

flesh flushed with rhythm and heat;

curve of hip distinguishing me

from my mother whose pants need belting;

breasts that sing, rubbed

in concentric circles with shea butter;

nipples which will never know jewelry

because they flinch even at clip-ons;

nailbeds a reincarnation

of my grandmother's long fingers;

tiny dunes of bicep I have labored

to bring into being and maintain;

narrow feet which fit snug

only in the most expensive of shoes;

wrists and ankles I can encircle

with thumb and forefinger;

nose and mouth that together savor

venison, real vanilla, green tea;

hair so limp and fine I still use

Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo;

all the weird, wet, noisy orifices

I need daily but can’t understand.

If my bowels were to fail, or my kidneys,

pancreas, vision...? Doctors would stitch and sew,

but it wouldn't be easy

and You'd still have to prop me up

as You do today and every day.

Blessed are you, creator of embodied miracles.

 

NISHMAT KOL CHAI

Breath of our bodies

and harmattan of our ambitions

hurricane of our angers

and chinook of our forgiveness

tempest of our childbirths

and cold front of our silences

articulated gasp of pain

and muffled sigh of pleasure

inbreath of my housecat

and outbreath of every tree

gust that reshapes coastlines

and tempest of our teeming hearts

wind of the physical world

and the realms of emanation beyond

Breath of All Life, the breath

of all life blesses Your name.

If every mouth joined right now

in breathing Your praises

if every present thing on earth

stopped so we could laud You

if we all shared the roaring voice

of lion and elephant and walrus,

the heightened senses

of the mystic and the hunting owl

if we could fly like the Concorde

looping your smoky name across the sky

if we could discard differences: human,

animal, fire, stone, seed, snow

even that cry of togetherness

would not be enough to thank You.

 

BARUCH SHE'AMAR

Every sunrise and sunset, birth

and death, storm and flood, blossom

and snowfall. Every lip balm,

paperback novel, beggar and bowl

and hair salon. Every glass of water,

muddy gorge, mother

and market and corrugated roof.

Rhododendrons, dirty oil barrels

filled with groundnut paste,

filligreed teapots, emerald beetles,

scrolls, wooden tulips, bottles of beer.

Sequoias, crepemyrtle, dwarf birch.

Every rubber band. Every paperclip.

Every open sore and aching tooth.

How does Your mouth not tire

of speaking the world into being?

Almighty, Your creations cannot imagine

infinity without growing weary.

It's hard to remember

Your mouth is purely metaphor

though Your speech is real.

You speak every atom in the universe,

a mighty chord resonating.

Every fold of skin, every grain of sand,

every iceberg and hibiscus come from you.

If You ever chose silence, even for an instant,

we would blink out of existence

as though this experiment had never been.

On preparing a nondenominational funeral

It was a challenge I had not sufficiently pondered: how to create a meaningful nondenominational (read: non-Jewish) funeral service which would serve its ritual purpose, bring comfort to the mourners, and use language familiar and accessible to those assembled, without taking me out of the comfort zone of what I can authentically pray as a rabbi and as a Jew?

One of my dearest teachers, when I was in rabbinic school, taught me that a funeral is the one time when we always say yes. If someone asks me to do a wedding, and I say no -- because the date isn't convenient, or because I'm not comfortable with their stipulations, or for whatever reason -- they can always find another officiant. There are a lot of rabbis who do weddings, and generally speaking, a nuptial couple approaches potential clergy well in advance of the blessed date. But if someone needs a funeral, the need is immediate, and it is incumbent on me as a rabbi to say yes. It's my job to be there for them and to use the prayers, skills, and teachings at my disposal to help them navigate the shoals of grief.

So when I was asked to officiate at the funeral of a congregant's loved one, I said yes without hesitation. The only question in my mind was what words, exactly, might be appropriate to the situation, because this family member was not Jewish. I have a fair number of dual-faith-heritage families in my community, which means I have a lot of congregants who have Christian family members. When those family members belong to their own faith-communities, then their funerals are a matter for their clergy. But when they're unaffiliated -- "unchurched," in Christian parlance -- a different situation arises. (Other liberal Jewish clergy, I expect you've run into this situation too; I'd love to hear from others about how you've handled it.)

I knew that most of the family members who would be gathering to mourn would not be Jewish. But all of them were grieving a loss, and all of them were in need of a liturgy which would create a safe container to hold them in their grief. This was a new spiritual assignment for me, and an opportunity to think about how I understand funerals to work and what I understand my role at a funeral to be.

First I looked to the funeral liturgy I usually use, which is based in Ma'aglei Tzedek, the Reform Rabbi's Manual, though has grown from there. (I've adapted my practices over the years, drawing on Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and Renewal liturgies and teachings.) I turned also to poetry, thumbing my copy of Beloved on the Earth, which I reviewed here some time ago. I knew I wanted some things which the assembled could read or recite together, ideally familiar words and cadences. Psalms, then: I chose parts of Psalm 90, and Psalm 23, and also the Lord's Prayer. (For all that it's a Christian prayer, there's nothing in it which is uncomfortable for me as a Jew -- actually when I've heard it rendered in Hebrew I've been amazed and moved by just how familiar its turns of phrase are, and how similar to the liturgy I love and know.)

What might the mourners be expecting, what forms and structures would be most comforting to them in their grief? I consulted Google to see what I could learn about Christian funeral liturgies. (I'm grateful to those who've put the Book of Common Prayer online!) Of course, there are certain central elements of Christian funeral ritual which are foreign to me. Christians and Jews have different teachings about what happens to our souls after death, and I can't in good faith affirm Jesus as the resurrection and the life or as the only path to God. But I fashioned a prayer of committal to recite at graveside, which I hoped would serve to sanctify, with our words and intentions, this place in the earth into which this beloved body would be returned.

I hope and pray that the words I assembled were the right ones, and that my presence was a comfort. For those who are interested in the end result of my labors, two short services are enclosed here: a memorial service intended for use in the funeral home, and a graveside service intended for interment. (Neither includes any identifying information or anything specific to this family.) I welcome your thoughts, questions, and feedback in response. And if these liturgies are useful to someone else, by all means, use them elsewhere; I share them freely, with hope that all who are bereaved will find comfort.

Memorial [pdf]

Interment [pdf]