The Cult Following Of The Physical Body

When I pass from this form,
As we all do,
No boxes or dreadful embalming fluid
That unnaturally preserve the body...

...for what purpose? That's just weird. :) Really!

Why indeed, do we attempt to preserve bodies, that were they alive, would surely be quite discomforted by being in a very constricted box? It's an odd practice, surely!

The memorial to a person, if he deserves one at all (and it is for each person to decide for himself of a passed soul, without judgment from others), is in memory of him as The Living, in his spirit.

It is, to my mind, a misguided memorial that glories a decomposing a physical body that a living soul no longer activates. Why not instead memorialize her spirit?

Honor in spirit and truth, not in worship of passing form. Forms are beautiful, but they are, forms. Only The Living continuously recreate their forms. It is the Livingness, the spirit, the witness, we can truly honor, for it gives life to the form, and witness to the beauty of The Living.

To be cremated is to return the form more quickly to more basic elements; this is useful. To be used for study for the advancement of the living, this is useful. To be embalmed and made up and put in a narrow box in the earth, is... well, useful after a much longer time to decomposition, but it is odd and a waste of box and good land. Sacrilege? No. I don't say that we can't build even larger monuments to people.... but why do we need their physical bodies in boxes decomposing more slowly to do this? Odd, indeed. Is anyone going to actually inter the remains for anything other than a scientific reason? I should hope not! Not to comfort the living, for sure! :)

Why even memorialize a group of people en masse, many of whom never know each other? What an odd practice, this concept of the communal burial land. Those who died in a common cause -- this makes sense. Those who died sharing some common cause -- this makes sense. And family plots.... well, you know, I think Jesus had something there when he was told his mother and brothers were waiting for him, and he pointed to the people who listened to him and followed him and said, "Behold, my mother and my brothers!" Sometimes these are the people with whom we share the closest genetic material, and sometimes.. they are not.

I speak not from experience. I have none. I speak only for myself. I know what I want for my form, and it's not to be decomposing unnaturally in a narrow box.

....Do we really admire the body so much? Does it make us laugh? If it is living, it might... but dead? Eyeww. :)

Quoth Gump, "...and that's all I have to say about that."

:D