But because no one ever explained what the worship meant — indeed, what death was — what defined the experience for me was not the story of what we were doing and why we were doing it. It was fear....
August 10, 2015
"When I was 5, we went to visit my great-grandfather’s grave in Brooklyn during the spring Qingming festival, when Taoists honor their dead with ancestral grave sweeping."
"In keeping with custom, we burned incense and joss-paper ingots so my bok-gung could have ghost money to spend in heaven."
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6 comments:
Earth to this one: everything will not be explained to you at a time and place of your choosing, if ever. Deal.
Curious. I would hate to be dependent on what family and those around me needed to explain what life--and death--means. A lot gets lost in the translation.
The default is figuring life out ourselves without being told directly. That's sometimes a great comfort, however false, unless you happen to shoot up a Tennessee recruitment center or Colorado theatre.
Fortunately, fallen man in the Judeo-Christian worldview has a deep ongoing voice to listen to and allow to shape our minds as our spirits are transformed. Our choice all the way. Called fools by many, I and my brothers and sisters find true comfort and assurance in that.
Someone figured out a long time ago that we can't get rid of the fear of death, practically speaking, so we had best find a way to control it and make it useful.
What could have been different had the stories been told, openly?
Talking about death openly isn't going to make it any more pleasant or less final.
Of the things in life that suck big, big, time, death is at the top of the list. Until the last day & the Resurrection of the Dead (for those of us who believe in such things), it's gonna stay at the top of the Big Suck list.
I have some bills of Chinese funeral money which are burned at funerals so that the deceased has money to pay bribes in the afterlife. I used them to explain cultural differences to my Social Studies students. My point was that some cultures are so inured to official corruption, that you cannot escape it even by death. The bills look like official oriental bank notes. They are not issued by the Bank of Heaven, but rather by the Bank of Hell. They are in $10,000 denominations. I have seen videos of funerals where this was done. They also burned paper replicas of Mercedes automobiles, for the use of the deceased.
I'm going to light a candle and say a prayer for Althouse in front of the statue of the Virgin next time I'm in a Catholic church, to intercede with God and give Althouse grace enough to endure our comments here for many years to come.
But I will put my coins in the little box before I do so, because otherwise the prayers won't work, right?
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