Feature

Cheryl Grossman and her husband used to laugh together about all the "rigmarole" that most funeral services involved. So when he died suddenly in October 1997, Cheryl knew that he would want the arrangements to be simple. Grossman, with a friend to support her, went to a funeral home to arrange a direct cremation. The funeral director kept "upselling"—pressing her to consider more expensive alternatives.

"Had I not had a friend who went with me, and had I not had a firm resolve, I probably would have signed anything," she says. "To be manipulated in that way at that time was one of the most obscene things I’d ever experienced."

Cheryl Grossman’s funeral home encounter is a common one. Not so common is how she took her experience to church—and how her church embraced it. Cheryl’s Catholic parish, St. Catherine of Siena in Austin, Texas, has offered a diverse array of practical and pastoral supports to the grieving for some time. Last year Grossman and two other parishioners helped create a death and funeral resource booklet that gathers information on all applicable parish ministries and other area resources in a convenient portable form. It includes specific information on affordable funeral options, planning sheets, and step-by-step advice for those dealing with a death in the family (see "Reclaiming Our Rites," p. 33).

Such a booklet is a simple, straightforward thing, but not every church would know how to welcome it. Most American Christians, including clergy, are almost as comfortable talking about the practical, concrete details of funerals as they are talking about the practical, concrete details of sex. In other words, the topic doesn’t come up much. And unlike sex, funeral planning isn’t a hot topic outside of church either.

A young Israeli soldier kicks a small rubber ball to two Palestinian boys in the West Bank city of Hebron, his machine gun slapping gently against his back as he moves. His fellow soldiers smoke and play cards nearby. Men in long flowing robes and white headscarves pass boys riding donkeys, tiny Palestinian shops loaded with film and souvenirs, and stores whose doorways are filled with bulging sacks of colored spices and grains.

Just beyond the soldiers sits an immense, foreboding building—one of its two entrances is guarded by Palestinian soldiers, the other by Israelis. It’s called the Mosque of Abraham or the Tomb of the Patriarchs, depending on who’s speaking, and inside are massive stones marking the supposed burial sites of Abraham and Sarah. Concrete walls enclose the tombstones. Muslims and Jews can view them through a set of iron bars, but only from separated parts of the building. The structure was bisected in 1994 after a Jewish settler, an American, entered the building and killed 49 Palestinians preparing to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Israeli soldiers are also in Hebron, a Palestinian-controlled city of about 140,000, to guard Jewish settlers who live down the street in a compound distinctive for its brand-new buildings and the barbed wire that surrounds it. "Five hundred soldiers are here to guard 30 settler families," according to Bourke Kennedy, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron. The Jewish settlement is one of four in the Hebron district; roughly 6,000 Jewish settlers live in two settlements on the city’s outskirts. Because of their political and symbolic importance, settlements such as these have been targets—and impetus—for Hamas and other Palestinian groups who have resisted the Israeli occupation with violence.

For many of us, the hardest work we do is finding time to rest. Free time means not only the nourishment of freer individuals, but the nurturing of a free people—a society—that can take joy in family and community, govern itself democratically, achieve social justice, heal the environment, and seek its spiritual growth.

Spiritual Communities. The Free Time/Free People Campaign calls on spiritual communities to undertake efforts which affirm our religious obligation to change the present patterns of overwork. To feel a sense of dignity at work and to feel that our work is worthy and sacred requires that we see ourselves as free human beings. Spiritual communities can reach out to the labor movement, environmentalists, women’s organizations, forward-looking business leaders, neighborhood and community-based organizations, and family-oriented groups to secure these changes in American life.

American Political, Economic, and Cultural Leaders. Much of the public dialogue in America worries about unemployment or "disemployment," rather than overwork. But the two are intimately connected: Because many jobs are badly paid or chopped up into "temporary" or "part-time" by employers seeking to avoid paying benefits, many people are forced to take two or three part-time jobs in order to barely make enough money to meet basic needs. In this way "underwork" drives people to overwork. The Free Time/Free People Campaign calls on political, economic, and cultural leaders to enact change that will reduce the hours of work imposed on individuals without reducing their income.

Policy Changes. The Campaign encourages all people to work for policies aimed at ending or severely limiting compulsory overtime. Workers should not be forced into 60-hour weeks. Preventing this kind of overwork will open new full-time jobs for other workers at decent wages.