Glasgow Archives - Page 3 of 27 - What is in Kelvin's Head?

I had a lovely morning today conducting a funeral service. Oh, I know lots of people don’t get that this can be satisfying but to me I can’t really think of a more lovely way of spending a morning than committing someone who has died at a great age into the love of God. The fact that the person who had died had in large part lived to make the world more beautiful only made it more lovely.

I was struck by a brief conversation with the undertaker before the service went in. This wasn’t a busy funeral – the person who had died had outlived most of those who might once have come to celebrate her life. As the coffin was being taken out of the hearse, I was surprised to see three members of the undertaker’s staff join him in lifting the coffin onto their shoulders.

“Oh, you don’t use a trolley?” I asked in surprise.

The answer that I got was wonderful –

“No, Mr Holdsworth, trolleys are for supermarkets, we always carry the coffin in”.

I cannot tell you how pleased I was to hear this.

So many funerals seem to involve a squeaky and undignified trolley. I even have to insist sometimes that the coffin is lifted onto proper tressels during the funeral itself. There’s many a person in the funeral business who would leave a coffin on the trolley throughout.

Am I alone in thinking that there’s not much dignity in a coffin on wheels?

I know there will be exceptions where a trolley is necessary and I guess that, in an industry that has seen costs soaring, it is going to cost more if one has to pay the pallbearers but I do prefer a coffin to be carried into church rather than pushed.

At some crematoria where I’ve officiated the presumption is so much in favour of wheels that a kind of roll-on, roll-off trolley has become an integral part of the proceedings.

We don’t talk that much about death, though there are some valiant attempts to get us to do so. There’s the death café movement that gathers people to talk about death and I seem to remember an initiative in the Church of England called Grave Talk which was an attempt to build up a conversation.

I know that any undertakers will arrange for pallbearers to carry a coffin in properly if you ask them. That’s what undertakers do – they undertake to make the arrangements for you. I’m someone who mourns the transformation of undertakers into “funeral directors” – the very term seems to imply that the business knows better than either the celebrant who has probably got a bit of experience on how to do things properly, the relatives (who may, if they are feeling particular grief may well feel better for being involved in the funeral planning and service) and indeed the wishes of the person who has died if they did the sensible thing and left instructions.

The joy today was finding a company which just don’t normally use a trolley as policy. It is a small thing but an important one.

Funeral trolleys always remind me of the wobbly nave altar in St Ninian’s Cathedral in Perth, which itself always looked as though it had been purloined from a hospital porter.

Now where did undertakers’ trolleys come from? And why do people put up with them?

They are hideous. Always hideous.

No. No. Away ye trolley-bearers.

And congratulations to Sim and Son for their trolley-free policy.

(I’m happy to link to any other undertakers in the West of Scotland who never use a trolley)

I’ve got an article in The Herald newspaper this morning ahead of tomorrow’s Pride March in Glasgow. This is what it says:

Agenda: I’ll march with Pride at our achievements but there is still a long way to go

This weekend, I’ll be marching through Glasgow in a black clerical suit and dog collar amongst a sea of rainbows as I take my place in the Pride March.

There’s a huge amount to celebrate this year, not least the way marriage equality is sweeping the world. It is an idea whose time has come. However, there are a lot of areas where change still needs to come.

The truth is, marriage law reform is not enough to achieve equality and it isn’t as though we’ve actually achieved equal marriage yet in Scotland either. Most religious people who happen to be gay still cannot get married in their own chosen church or other place of worship. The law may have changed, as have social attitudes, but there are still plenty of institutions that discriminate directly against people like me.

The next steps are easy to foresee but they won’t happen automatically. We need individuals to continue to stand up against prejudice when they see it. We need the major equality organisations to understand how much remains to be done, particularly in areas touched by religion. We need political parties to continue to consult about the next steps in changing the law.

The most obvious area where a further change in the law could make a difference is in respect of charity law. It simply shouldn’t be the case in a modern Scotland that any group can be a charity, with all the tax breaks that implies, and campaign or discriminate against lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual (LGBT) people. Yet religious charities can do exactly that. Charities that tried to campaign against people because of their race would be utterly unacceptable in society even though that was once justified on religious grounds. The same change needs to happen in respect of all charities, religious and otherwise; no exemptions, no get-out clauses, no discrimination full stop. Why should any citizens have to live with so-called charitable organisations getting tax-breaks to campaign against their wellbeing?

Religion remains one of the areas where even the pro-equality organisations fear to tread. Yet equality will not ultimately be won in wider society until it has been won in even the most intransigent institutions. Campaigning organisations have helped to remove or at least significantly lessen prejudice and discrimination in so many unlikely institutions: the military, the police, the fire service, and so many workplaces have changed hugely for LGBT people. Their work cannot be completed until religious institutions have changed too.

Fortunately, the religious scene is beginning to change. The views of people in the pews of most of our institutions are converging around the acceptance of same-sex relationships. However, institutionally there is much to do and there’s a particular need for many in leadership positions to articulate publicly the support they have been happy to give to gay colleagues in private for years.

There will be many who share my view that no school, religious or otherwise, should have access to public money unless it is not merely tolerating gay staff and gay pupils but actively encouraging them to thrive. Education policy needs to catch up with public opinion. Conversations between government and the faith-school sector need to be both robust and challenging.

One of the most bizarre claims that we heard in the debate about marriage is that allowing same-sex couples access to marriage would somehow imperil the married lives of straight couples. Such nonsense was as likely to come to pass as the claims that hurricanes and earthquakes would follow on from strengthening gay rights.

In fact, there are areas of society where campaigning to improve things for LGBT people will lead to supporting marriage rather than threatening it. LGBT people are disproportionately and adversely affected by poor sex education in schools, for example, but that area of education is becoming a crisis for all pupils. Most young people learn about sex from pornography. If we want them to learn something different then it means parents working with schools to produce much better age-appropriate sex education using some of the successful models found on the continent. Such education will be much more explicit and come much earlier. It will also be much more effective leading to better life choices, happier people and fewer teenage pregnancies.

I’ll join the march this weekend with a strong sense of Pride in what we’ve achieved but also a strong yearning for the changes that we’re yet to bring about.

The Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth is Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow

Trolleys are for Supermarkets

Article in Herald: I’ll march with Pride – but…

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