This Friday I’ll be at the Skill Share Potluck in Ann Arbor talking about green burial. Interesting that we have to teach how to do this now. “Green Burial” used to be the norm but the practice went away, like home canning, home birthing and growing your own food. With green burial are we trying to re-live the old days or romanticize about how things used to be, like one reader asked? Perhaps there’s a little of that. But I think we have an imperative to heal the earth and ourselves from some of the bad habits we’ve gotten into. With technological advances, huge improvements in public health, living conditions and social awareness, there were also some not-so-good results; we have made a habit of giving over our bodies at birth and death to someone else to care for. This is an unwanted and largely unexamined and unchallenged side effect, and we are recognizing that it has huge implications for our environment, both earthly and bodily. It’s not a good thing to be so emotionally, physically, spiritually and psychologically removed from universal human occurrences like birth and death and caring for the sick. With our gains we have also lost much.

Our current burial practices, based on misinformation, fear, convenience and social trends that don’t serve us anymore, don’t make sense anymore, either to us emotionally or to the earth environmentally. This is not just a throw back to the old days for the sake of nostalgia; it’s a biological imperative. We’ve realized that so much about how we live is not sustainable and we are trying to change that. Let’s realize that the way we die and dispose of the dead is also not sustainable. Sure, burial used to be “green” and it’s attractive to a lot of people to revive old traditions, but we are adding new logic, research and reasons to new green burial practices.

Those of us who have “remembered” how to care for the dead would like to teach others. Come learn about it and share a meal at the same time! Friday, March 13, 6:30 - 8:30 at Hathaways Hideaway in downtown Ann Arbor. More info at a2reskilling.com.