Great Tips On How To Pick A Theme For A Memorial Service

By Tom Tree

Planning a memorial service for someone that you love is a very hard thing to have to do. The most important thing that you have to think about it is how you want to represent to the guest, the life of the person that you are honoring and what they meant to the world. At this time you will be of course overcome with grief for the loss of your loved one, and at the same time you need to make sure that you do the best job that you can for the service. Let's take a few minutes and offer some tips on how to decide a theme for a memorial service.

It is important that before you get started with the planning of the service that you take at least a half a day to deal with your own feelings of loss. You will need to make some major decision about how bets to honor your friend and you do not need to make them while dealing with strong emotional waves. After you have dealt with your emotional needs you can start out by thinking about the kind of person your friend was and how you could best describe them if you had to in one word. This one word that makes up the essence of who your friend was is the foundation of the theme for their memorial service.

Secondly, you will want to pick a tone that is in line with the way that your friend lived their life. If they were an energetic, outgoing an vibrant person who loved every minute of life and all that it had to offer then you might want to celebrate their life with a party. If, however, they lived a very conservative, traditional and somber life then you might want to have a more classic service such as a wake or remembrance circle.

So you have established the basic concept and the tone of the service not you have to decide the very important aspect of where to have the service. In this case let the spirit of your friend guides you. Where is a place that they loved? Was there a certain spot that moved them, that they drew power from in their life? Did they speak of a favorite childhood place or of a vacation spot that they longed to visit but perhaps never had the chance to? These are all great places to have the memorial service for your friend.

So you have a concept, a location and a tone. The last thing you need to worry about is the guest list. Is this service to be by invitation only or should it be open to the world and all whom new the honoree. Either way is appropriate and this decision will again be based on the life the person lived. Were they a private person in their life, one whom only had a select circle of friends and family or were they a highly public person who loved the world and called everyone a friend?

It is hoped that you will be able to use these tips on how to decide a theme for a memorial service to not only plan a get together that is in the best memory of your friend but also will help you to get through the pain of their loss easier. Losing a friend is tough, but remember that life does go one and they will forever live on in the hearts and minds of those whom they loved and the life they left behind will be a tribute to their existence. The service is a chance to celebrate them. Good luck.

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Want To Overcome Grief? Counselling Can Help In Dealing With Your Grief.

By Tracy Mills

Counselling for grief involves talking about the loss and so enables the person to come to terms with the loss over time.

Grief can be caused by a number of upsetting events. In addition to the death of a loved one, events such as news of a fatal illness, marriage breakdown or loss of a job can bring on grief.

Counselling provides time to explore issues and other factors that occured that can help or hinder the process of adjusting to the loss.

Grief is a most painful experience to go through. We suffer many small losses that help us to handle the large losses. When someone close to us has been ill for a long time, we experience great sorrow when the death finally occurs. But when death occurs suddenly then our life is thrown into turmoil and we can deny the death occuring and feel confused. Counsellors call this a complicated grief reaction and is brought about as we were not emotionally prepared for the death.

Grief counselling can take place either individually or in groups. Grief counselling is most common after a loved one dies, but may also be beneficial after other grief-provoking situations, such marriage break up, job loss, the diagnosis of a fatal illness or another reason. Grief counselling works to overcome the person's intense feelings of loss.

When someone we love and are close too dies, we will receive much attention from close friends and family. But soon others will "move on", especially when the loss is not so close to them. The person grieving however may not feel that they can "move on" just yet. In this situation grief counselling can be very beneficial, this is especially so if the if the death was sudden. Grief counselling gives the person a route to adjust to the loss and receive assistance that is not be available from family, friends or other people in our network.

Grief counselling is particularly important for people who are: socially a little isolated, or had a difficult relationship with the bereaved or already had emotional issues when the loss occurred.

Grieving is a process that cannot be rushed and counsellors are aware of this. Counselling will make it clear that the feelings or choices made while grieving are normal and natural. The aims of the grief counsellor differ to regular counselling which is undertaken to change behaviour. Instead, the aim of the grief counsellor is to be "present" for the bereaved when they are experiencing a most vulnerable period in their lives. The term compassioning is sometimes used by counsellors.

Most frequently, the grief counsellor helps the person by simply listening in an active manner and by demonstrating empathy. Then assisting the person to find coping mechanisms to deal with the grief.

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To learn more about counselling visit Stockport Counsellor. To find a Local Counselling Service.

Flowers And Meanings In A Memorial Service In Different Religions

By Tom Tree

This is an incredibly hard time for anyone and when consoling mourners it is important to do the right thing. Flowers and meanings in a funeral service in different religions are an important part of the funeral process. Sending the wrong arrangement or an offensive color will upset the family and make you look very bad.

Being sensitive about different religions is a wonderful way to make sure that you do not send the wrong thing to the funeral. Some of the more popular religions do not have rules as to what color or style of arraignment to send. Most Christian religions have no specifics for this type of thing.

At a Christian funeral it is a good idea to send flowers and normally the family dictates where to send the flowers to. You will send it to the graveside, church or the family's home. Other religions have different strictures about flowers and sending them. In the Jewish faith it is not accepted to send any form of flower.

In most religions it is not at all offensive. It might just not be wanted. Sending a fruit or gift basket is appropriate in these cases. The Jewish faith prefers this as a form of sympathy. They do not believe that flowers are a good thing at the funeral.

There are several religions that sending flowers is completely appropriate. The Buddhist religion for example welcomes all forms of flowers to the funeral home. Another religion that flowers are welcomed regardless of type is the Mormon religion. It is appropriate to send flowers but not in the shape of a cross. In Eastern Orthodox flowers are appropriate especially white ones.

It is extremely important not to send the inappropriate bouquet or arraignment to a funeral. When you do this and are not sensitive to the family's wishes and religions it can offend them deeply. The last thing that you want to do is make the family feel worse than the already do.

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Looking Into The Best Funeral Memorial Service Program For Your Be Loved One

By Tom Tree

Planning a funeral for a loved one you know that it has to be important. However, for some people you will want to know how to find the best funeral memorial service program for your be loved one. Here are some of the ways that you can use to impress people with this service.

One tip is to see what the person enjoyed when they were living. Finding out what they enjoyed doing will allow you to know what to base the funeral around.

Something else that will help you out is making sure that you use the right church. You might have changed your religion since you last seen the people, but the person that you are having the funeral for never changed theirs. So make sure that you choose the one that they want to have used.

You will also need to determine if you want to have a party after the burial. The party can be a nice way to celebrate the life that just passed away so that they will know that you do care for them.

Some people might want to give speeches to help others know about the person so you need to weigh in on if you want that or not. These can be nice, but at the same time if you choose the wrong person it could end up being an attack on the deceased that they cannot defend themselves from.

When you are trying to plan to bury a loved one you know that it is going to be hard to do. However, if you do not do it properly your entire family will never let you forget, but at the same time you will want to make sure that you take into consideration all the items that you think the person being buried would like to see as well.

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Shroom: A Cultural History Of The Magic Mushroom

By Dr. Markho Rafael

Anyone interested in magic mushrooms needs to read the 2006 book by Andy Letcher titled "Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom." You may or may not like it, because the author does not pull his punches with existing theories on Shroom history. But even so, you need to read it!

Why? Because there is probably no other human alive besides Letcher that has read practically every piece of information ever published about magic mushrooms. And he has been good enough to put it together for us in a compact book of only 300 pages. (384 with reference section and index.)

Two major portions of Shroom are devoted to the Siberian use of the Fly Agaric for both recreational and spiritual purposes, and to Gordon Wasson's mid-century discovery of magic mushroom use in Mexico and subsequent popularization of Psilocybin mushrooms in the West.

Later on in the book, Letcher give a historic account of the immensely popular 'free festivals' in Britain during the late 1970's and early 80's. The no. 1 'drug' of choice at these festivals was wild-harvested magic mushrooms. Margaret Thatcher successfully put a stop to these festivals, thereby ending the second wave of magic mushroom use. The third and still ongoing wave of shroom popularity began when simple methods of cultivating Psilocybe mushrooms in large quantities were developed by American Terence McKenna.

My main reservation when it comes to this book is that Letcher, at least in the beginning, seems overly prone to side with the critics and skeptics of the many various theories of historic use of magic mushrooms.

E.g. he points out that the ancient petroglyphs in Tassili, Algeria, which many shroom enthusiasts are convinced depict shamans with magic mushroom, could potentially have several other interpretations. The reader is left with a sense that because there are other possible interpretations, therefore, the mushroom interpretation is wrong.

Letcher's critical analysis of the many theories on historic use of magic mushrooms would have been excellent if it had been balanced in terms of pros and cons, which it is not.

This lack of balance is especially blatant when one realizes that he uses the reality of a changing environment and flora as an argument against the possible use of magic mushrooms by Druids in a heavily forested ancient Britain even though it grows abundantly in British pastures today, while simultaneously arguing that the Fly agaric could not have been used in ancient Egypt because no Fly agaric related mushroom grows there today.

In all fairness, though, Letcher does get more balanced in his presentation of different viewpoints towards the end of the book, acknowledging several times that there is no objective way to be sure which of the opposing claims are valid. He deserves kudos for that.

All in all, this book must surely be the most thorough and comprehensive account ever written on the history of magic mushrooms; in particular the more recent part of that history, relating to the past one hundred years or so.

In addition to magic mushrooms, Shroom is also an account of the history of psychedelics in general. Large portions of the book tell the stories of Aldous Huxley and mescaline, Timothy Leary and LSD, and the more recent use of ecstasy at rave fests.

So notwithstanding my reservations against Letcher's slightly unbalanced presentation in the first half of the book, I really do think that anyone with a serious interest in magic mushrooms needs to read Shroom. There is no other book like it out there, I'm sure.

About the Author:

Get your copy of Shroom by Andy Letcher now! Dr. Rafael graduated from Chiropractic College in 1996. He now specializes in studying and writing about herbal medicine. You can find additional reviews on mushroom books at www.mycelium-running.info.

The Orthodox Values In Memorial Service

By Tom Tree

Traditional funeral services are important to most families. The ethnic traditions in funeral service - East European family-Orthodox practiced by families is no different. Their religion is known as eastern orthodox and is an off shoot of Catholicism. Their funeral practices are very similar to those of the Catholic faith.

In eastern European families cremation is a big no. They believe that they should be returned to the earth. Bodies are dealt with by being put into a coffin and then buried into the earth. This is normally accompanied by a grave side service and mourners throwing some dirt on the coffin once it is in the grave.

Organ donation on the other hand is all right. It goes under helping people out even in death. In order to be an organ donor an eastern European would need to fill out an organ donor card in the presence of at least one witness. It is believed that the practice of helping others out in this way is referenced in the bible.

Several prayers are said over the dying and the dead in this religion. These prayers are to get the soul to depart the body to continue its journey. These are ordinarily accompanied by a vigil and a viewing. They prepare for death when someone is terminally ill rather than waiting until after they are gone.

A funeral is held as is a wake. They have the funeral at a church, the wake at the home, and a small service that is graveside. Normally crosses, flowers and other gifts are given to the deceased's family members. Not giving a gift at this time is considered extremely rude and gifts of white flowers are especially good.

If you are planning a funeral for someone who is Eastern Orthodox you should speak with the church on exact needs. They will be happy to speak with you and you do not want to do anything that will offend anyone especially at this trying time. It is important to observe all of the important practices when dealing with mourning relatives.

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Get more details on how you can select a stunning gravestone that will reflect your ethnic traditions today! The right tombstone will reflect your traditions for generations to come.

The Christian Family Experiences In Memorial Service

By Tom Tree

Certain elements of a funeral are expected to take place when a person who is a member of a Christian family passes away. There are traditions that have been part of Christian funerals for centuries. Others have more recently become customary and are now frequently integrated into the services. The most important ethnic traditions in funeral service - Christian family members will want to be sure to include is the reading of scripture.

Services are usually held at a church or at a funeral home. Often times, the body of the deceased family member is at the funeral home for several days prior to the funeral service. It is taken care of by the undertaker, or funeral director, and prepared for burial.

The body is then placed in a casket and kept at the home if that is where the funeral will take place. If the service is to take place at a church, it is held at the home until just before the funeral, and taken to the church in a type of automobile called a hearse. If the body is going to be cremated, the service can be conducted without the body present, or the cremation can take place after the service is over.

There is typically an open house called a viewing, wake, or visitation the night before the funeral. These take place so that loved ones of the deceased can gather and offer condolences. The casket containing the body is also present, and attendees are able to view it and say their final farewells.

There is usually an obituary placed in the local newspaper that serves as a notice of the death to the community. The time and location of the visitation and funeral service are usually noted there, unless the funeral is to be private, for family only.

A minister or pastor traditionally conducts the service, regardless if it is held at a funeral home or a church. Scripture from the Bible is read to give hope and encouragement to the mourners in attendance. After the service, if the deceased is to be buried, not cremated, there is a graveside service where family and friends gather at the cemetery where the grave is located, and watch as the body is lowered into the ground. Following the graveside and funeral services, those attending return to the funeral home or church for a brief time of fellowship and remembering of the deceased.

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A headstone or monument on the grave of a family member is typical in many cultures. These are intended to last for ages and are usually made from granite or marble.