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Will the
Circle be Unbroken?
by the Rev. Rich Smith
November 4, 2007
Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21
One Sunday last summer I found myself
visiting a church in a town outside of Boston, and since I arrived with
plenty of time to spare before the service, I wandered around the
grounds. In many ways the church resembled ours, with its brick
facade, Georgian architecture, and high white steeple, but one very
obvious difference was that fully half the church property was given
over to a cemetery. I’m still fascinated by churches with
attached graveyards, since where I’m from such things are quite
rare. This one had been around for quite a long time, with
weather-worn headstones marking lives that in most cases ended before
the Civil War. In fact, as I looked around, I could not find
anyone who was buried in the last century or so. It seems that by
about 1920, the cemetery filled up, and since then the church has
maintained it but hasn’t been able to add to it. It has been a
dead cemetery, if that’s not a redundancy.
Until now. It turns out that when the cemetery
was laid out, a pathway was left for horse drawn hearses, and so the
church has recently decided to use that space to create a columbarium,
where urns bearing the cremated ashes of the faithful may rest.
And this very morning, at the very same time that we are re-dedicating
our own memorial garden, they will be holding a similar ceremony, “a
dedication of the Wellesley Congregational Church Memorial Path and the
reopening of our churchyard for burial of our members and their
families.” And so it will become again a living cemetery, which
is not an oxymoron.
Since our memorial garden was dedicated in 1978, the
remains of some seventy saints have been laid to rest there, and
because the ashes are not in urns but mingle with the soil, we are in
no danger of running out of room. While the garden is open to any
member of the church and their immediate families, not everyone takes
advantage of it. Many prefer to be buried in caskets in family
plots, or perhaps Arlington, if they qualify. And that’s
okay. These days there are a lot of choices.
Some are quite unique, and we might be hesitant to
choose them. For example, like Gene Roddenberry, the creator of
Star Trek, you can have your ashes launched into space. A
company called Celestis offer memorial space flights that will release
a portion of your ashes to orbit the earth, or will simply take your
ashes on a mission that will return them to earth afterwards.
Actually shooting them into space might be quite fitting, for some
scientists think that life was triggered on earth when certain
meteorites fell, bringing with them essential-for-life substances;
maybe we really are made of stardust, and to stardust we shall
return. But if you don’t want to go that far, a company called
Eternal Ascent will place your ashes in a biodegradable balloon that is
released into the air. It eventually pops and your ashes are
dispersed. To go out with a bang, enlist Heavens Above Fireworks
who will pack your ashes into fireworks and then set off a remarkable
firework display in your memory. Eternal Reefs will mix your ashes with
cement to form “an awesome artificial reef,” which will then be placed
on the ocean floor to create a dynamic new place for undersea plant and
animal life. LifeGem will turn your ashes into diamonds.
Another innovative company will mix your ashes with paint and paint
your portrait. And, finally, another entrepreneur came up with a
way turn one's ashes into pencils. Apparently 240 pencils can be made
out of one person's remains.
My favorite comes closest to what we have here.
Eco-eternity offers a green form of burial, where they will place your
remains in a biodegradable container and plant it beside a tree.
In time, the remains are soaked up by the tree’s root system, and the
circle of life is completed – ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and life to
life. The only catch is, it costs $4,500, although you can inter
up to fifteen family members under your tree over a span of 99
years. Our garden is free, but it’s the same principle – the
ashes mingle with the soil and eventually become part of the garden
itself, the grass, the trees, the flowers, and the circle of life goes
on.
So we have choices. I have officiated at
burials in places as Arlington National Cemetery, Los Angeles’ fabled
Forest Lawn, and the successor to Tombstone’s Boot Hill. I have
scattered the ashes of a beloved choir member from a boat in the
Pacific ocean, while the choir sang her favorite hymn over the roar of
the boat’s engine; I have presided over scatterings from mountaintops
and cast them into a windswept desolate desert. And since coming
to Westmoreland, I have helped lay to rest the remains of some thirteen
of our saints in the memorial garden. I’m glad it is here, and
that the names of those interred are listed not only on the memorial
plaque on the back wall of the sanctuary, but also now on a semi-circle
of bricks which mark the garden area itself. It is a reminder
that we are, as scripture says, “surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses,” and that at every step of our lives, from baptismal font to
eternal resting place and everywhere in between, the church is there,
manifesting God’s care, where, as the Psalmist says, one generation
lauds God’s works to another, in an unbroken circle.
Our garden was originally dedicated on March 5,
1978, on a day when, according to the Westmorelander, “snow and frozen
ground prevented the planned committal of ashes at that time,” and
where a number of those in attendance stayed in the sanctuary,
listening on the public address system. We’ll use part of the
original liturgy a bit later at the rededication.
The garden’s creation was a milestone in the life of
the church, but it did not come without a lot of hard work, by some who
many of us would still remember and even some one who are still here,
such as Pat Barnett-Brubaker and Dick Marsh. The records of the
church show that the idea was first proposed eight years before, at a
Deacons meeting in the spring of 1970. The minutes read, “There
was a brief discussion of the possibility of establishing a Memorial
Garden, using part of the Westmoreland grounds, where the remains of
cremated Westmoreland members might be placed. The Trustees are to look
into the legal ramifications.”
The matter surfaced again in December of that year,
when it was reported in the Deacons minutes that “the matter is still
awaiting decisions by the Board of Trustees.” Sound familiar?
Apparently not much happened, at least officially,
because in April 1972 it came up at the Deacons again, this time with
the notation that several church members had “inquired about the
proposal” and so a motion was passed unanimously that the Trustees be
asked to explore the possibility. The next month the Trustees got
the message and in typical church fashion, “It was decided to ask the
Board of Deacons to make a feasability study elaborating upon the
practical and legal aspects and presenting a more complete concept for
(Trustee) consideration...”
More than a year later, in September of 1973, “Mr.
Allen brought up the question of a Memorial Garden as a matter of
urgency for the Deacons.” He reminded the board of the history of
motions and counter-motions and reported that no further action had
been taken, but that more and more Westmorelanders were expressing
concern about the delay. “Judge Ketcham urged the Board to
explore (possible) legal problems with some of the church lawyers...”
and the Montgomery County Zoning Commission. Minutes of October
and November of that year show the project progressing ahead, and by
March of 1974, design work had begun. But then came news that it
wasn’t quite legal to have something resembling a cemetery in an area
zoned for family housing, so a slew of letters went back and forth with
the county, a revision to the county ordinances was proposed, and at
last, in late 1977, as work was about to commence, the law was
amended. The garden was completed in time for the dedication in
March of 1978, an important milestone, even if Mother Nature didn’t
cooperate.
But there was one more hurdle – the church needed
policies and procedures, as to whose remains could be interred, and
how, and the manner in which it would all be recorded. I found a
paper describing how a special book should be used to record and
maintain all the names, on “plain borderless parchment pages” and even
the format for how the vital facts would be placed on the page. A
sample was given, with a fake name, a pseudonym – not “John Doe” but
“Richard Smith Doe!” I don’t know – that’s a bit spooky, if you
ask me!
In any case, all the hurdles were crossed, problems
dispatched with, policies settled on, earth moved and trees and shrubs
planted, and eight years after it was first formally proposed, the
garden was opened and dedicated, and since then, some seventy saints
have been laid to rest. In 1982, a memorial bench was added
and dedicated in memory of Genevieve Dennett Master, of whom it was
noted that in addition to being a loyal member of Westmoreland and
proud of her lineage going back to a private in the Continental Army
and the third president of Harvard, she was a “loyal Red Sox
fan.” I wonder if she would have hung on another 22 years had she
known – she’s surely happy now! Perhaps in those years many
people, whether Red Sox fans or not, sat on the bench in the garden
reflecting on life’s disappointments and uncertainties and felt a sense
of peace and God’s presence. Certainly, the garden has been a
wonderful place of meditation, and most years we have visited it early
each Easter morning for our sunrise service, to celebrate the ultimate
victory of life over death, because it is a place of life as well as
death, of hope as well as memory.
In 2003 we gathered the names of all those
interred and placed them on the plaque on the back wall. Now,
thanks to the work of Janet Moyer and Mary Grossnick the Memorial book
is up-to-date, on acid-free paper, and finally, the efforts of Otto
Hetzel have come to fruition and we’ve added one more thing -- the
names inscribed on bricks in the garden itself -- in a semi-circle, not
separate monuments or markers, but all of one piece, symbolizing that
these dearly beloved departed saints, and eventually all of us, are
connected in the great circle of life, part of the family of God’s
people.
And so this morning, this All Saints Sunday, we join
with the Psalmist in affirming that “one generation shall laud God’s
works to another, and shall declare God’s mighty acts.... Great
is the Lord and greatly to be praised, whose greatness is
unsearchable.” St. Augustine quoted these verses from Psalm 145
in the opening pages of his Confessions, and declared, because human
beings are God’s creation, they cannot experience contentment apart
from praising God, “because you made us for yourself, and our hearts
are restless until they rest in you.”
It is our faith that each of these seventy departed
saints of Westmoreland have indeed found their rest in God, even as
they are alive still in the vast unbroken circle of God’s love.
.
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
1
Westmoreland Circle
Bethesda, MD 20816
301-229-7766
Email the church office: churchinfo@westmorelanducc.org
www.westmorelanducc.org
An
Open and Affirming Congregation
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