As delivered to the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County on Sunday, April 19, 2009: I believe in natural burial. By natural burial I mean that we stop cutting down trees to make coffins, that we refrain from destroying rock face to make headstones, and that we don’t poison the earth with the formaldehyde in […]
death
The Orlando Massacre
The tenor of American society has become very shrill and an illness courses through its veins at levels deeper than its idolatrous worship of personal weapons.
So Long, Scalia
I must confess my first reaction when I heard of Justice Scalia’s death. I was just happy, happy that he could no longer get in the way of the rights of my gay or female or non-white friends. Out of the way! I smiled. My second feeling was guilt. What kind of person celebrates the […]
Death, Grief and Love
Platform address by Dr. Joseph Chuman, leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, November 4, 2012 Last year my professional life reached a milestone: For the first time in my 44-year career, the annual number of funeral and memorial services at which I have officiated surpassed the number of weddings I have […]
Death: does it really exist?
Here’s a recap of our recent discussion on Death: does it really exist? There are two schools of thought about the distinction between living and non-living. One sees these two states as totally different and contrasting. The other sees existence in continual flux between organic and inorganic states of varying complexity. In the latter view, […]
