I want my consciousness uploaded to the Cloud where I will be IMMORTAL!!!!
But seriously.. how long til you think mankind has the tech to do that kind of thing?
I'm not sure if I'm welcome to answer because I don't really think of myself as pagan.. but I would like to offer some thoughts. I agree with the people here who point out a funeral is more for those left behind and so I'm not sure I would like to have too much influence on how things go. However part of the greiving process would be acknowledging the legacy that a person has left behind. If a person gets a say in how their funeral rites are conducted, it could be a way to acknowledge their influence in our life even though they are no longer imminently present. My mother has left me with a very firm request that her funeral stays small and exclusive. Even in death, she wants to rub people's noses in it. Okay mum...
I know it's very trendy recently to have 'celebration of life' funerals rather than mourning death. If that's how my family wants to greive that's fine.. but I've been to funerals where there are people who are really not ready to go there yet. When I went to my grandmother's funeral, my Aunt was in a state of deep depression. She looked so ill and ... definitely not ready to celebrate and smile. What's wrong with that? Why try to hide our sadness? It's not that I want people to be sad, I just want them to be honest.
..And speaking of honesty, I'm not sure if I want much talk about Heaven and the Resurection. I'd much rather something that is meaningful in the moment, not a wish for a 'some day' event.
Why You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral
Aaron Freeman.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
Amen.
Originally Posted by Azvanna
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