A relationship with God means our bodies and the earth are not separate.
green burial
Mallory McDuff 3-01-2022
Graves in a natural burial ground. Graham Hardy / Alamy
My father saw Lent as a chance to build a more sustainable life, much like training for a championship game. As a mother and teacher of environmental education in the mountains of North Carolina, I couldn’t have imagined how the Lenten practice of my childhood would help me face both life and death amid a global climate crisis decades later.
Lauren Markoe, Religion News Service 1-23-2014
Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., blesses Kateri Meadow Natural Burial Preserve. Photo: Albany Diocesan Cemeteries / RNS
Growing up in small-town Georgia, John B. Johnson had family friends who ran the funeral home down the street, so the particulars of a typical American funeral — the embalming, the heavy casket, and remarks about how great the deceased’s hair looked — were all familiar to him.
When the time came, he assumed, his funeral would look much the same.
But Johnson, now 44, envisions a different sort of send-off for himself: a “green burial” that draws both upon his faith and his commitment to the environment. For Johnson and others like him, a green burial is a way to care for the Earth and answer to the part of his soul that recoils at the pomp of the average American funeral, and takes seriously the biblical reminder: “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”