Are Hymns All That Different from Psalms? Perhaps

Another day, another funeral. Wrong word. Another day, another "memorial service." It used to be that you were interred and then remembered a year or so later, when people were beginning to forget all about you. Now the burying and the remembering are elided, partly, I suppose, to save time and money, but more by way of euphemism. How long before we start throwing memorial services for the still-alive in order to skip the nastiness of death altogether?

So here I am, sitting on the back row of a little urban chapel, giving thanks for a life that ended only last week. But at least the service isn't taking the humanist route. No breezy gathering of accidental mourners wearing cardigans in a room resembling a bridge club and everyone desperate not to mention God. Instead, a real vicar in a real surplice; a reading from St. John's Gospel; many in the congregation wearing black; and proper hymns instead of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."