Oh man. I am still soooo annoyed. I can't hardly get this all into perspective....
Yesterday I took my mum to the funeral of a friend, Shirley Quigley, who I have literally known all my life, like from the day I got home from being born. My mom's known her for I dunno, 50 years?
Shirley was a VERY religious person. She was always on the conversion path. It made her happy and she was very genuine, so despite disagreeing with it all, I respect her dedication to her faith.
Expect ably, the funeral had a very Baptist flavour, so that part didn't surprise me at all. Actually none of it surprised me; some of it just totally pissed me off.
The overriding emotion at a funeral is sadness - and for the family and close friends of the deceased, it is a profound sadness of the "How ever shall I go on past today?" type. Sadness like that is a living being that not only stinks, but sits on your chest and picks at your eyes. In short, one does not have to be reminded at all that it's there or where it came from.
Why the pastor running the service yesterday would take half an hour to remind everyone how sad they were and do it in such a K-Tel sales pitch style is beyond me.
And when did this guy decide to do this? At the end of the service, after all the appointed friends and family members had delivered their heart-felt eulogies to Shirley. They were all wonderful and they all said everything that needed saying.
The Pastor did note that usually, by the time he got the podium back, everything he wanted to say had been said.
Well, yes, that would be the point!
But then he had to utterly bore and anger the entire gathering with an inane, unnecessary and really bad, unprepared soliloquy, complete with the requisite used-car-salesman hand and facial gestures. It was frankly appalling.
So I glared at him for the entire 1/2 hour he presumed on the saddened crowd. My hair, being platinum blond (ok rankly grey) sticks out so I'm sure he saw me and I'm pretty certain he noticed me glaring at him. I hope he knows how much I had to work at not pointing at the imaginary watch on my wrist with the "Time" signal.
I get it that ministers have a product to sell - and yes, I mean sell because selling the product gets them paid - but a funeral is NOT the place. People go there to pay their respects to the person who has left a Yucatan-sized crater in their lives, not to hear a sales pitch for another dead and probably never existent person.
So to all the pastors out there and to those of you who have the ear of those pastors, a funeral is not your day to self-promote, nor is it a day to inflict guilt (the decease was religious, why aren't you?) on the attendant guests. It is a day for a pastor to provide a framework but that is all. End. Stop and get out of the way.
Otherwise, your desperate-for-attention, damaged little soul neediness is on display. Stop it.
