Mainstreaming the Worship of the Dead

False Religion Parents beg school to end kids' classes - in graveyard! Children terrified by ghostly nightmares WORLDNETDAILY - July 29, 2007 Some 200 schoolchildren in India have an unusual setting for their educational studies - a graveyard. And their parents are appealing to officials to find an alternative setting because of the ghostly nightmares their schooling experience is inspiring. The Indian Urdu primary school is a 200-year-old Muslim cemetery in Kohari in the state of Bihar, about 130 miles from Patna. There, children between the ages of 5 and 9 get their first lessons in reading and writing and play among some 100 tombs, including dozens of freshly dug and shallow graves. "I have stopped going to school after many dead people walked out of their graves and came into my dreams, ordering me to reach school on time," said 6-year-old Raqib Ansari, according to a report in the Salem Voice news service. Another student, Nuresha Kaitoon, said: "We play and study in the graveyard. When asleep at home, we get weird dreams. Like the one, in which a man with a beard comes shouting at us and orders us to go to school. When it's dark, we are very scared." - - - - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56882 Green Funerals: Putting aside embalming and tombs PORTLAND PRESS HERALD - MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM [Blethen Maine/Seattle Times Co.] - By John Richardson - October 28, 2007 Klara Tammany's mother didn't want a typical American funeral. No embalming, no metal casket, not even a funeral home. When she died after a long illness a couple of years ago, family members and friends washed and dressed her body and put it in a homemade wooden casket, which was laid across two sawhorses in the dining room of her condo in Brunswick. Then, for two days, friends and family visited, brought cut flowers, wrote messages on the casket's lid and said goodbye. "We had this wake, and it was wonderful," Tammany said. The home funeral is part of an emerging trend that some believe will change the way Americans deal with death. Send-offs like the one Tammany planned with her mother are called "green" funerals because they avoid preservative chemicals and steel and concrete tombs, all designed to keep a body from decomposing naturally. After the wake, Tammany's mother was cremated and her ashes buried near the family's camp in Monmouth. Another alternative that is just emerging in Maine is natural burial in a green cemetery: wooded graveyards that ban chemicals and caskets that won't easily decompose. Two such cemeteries are now preparing to do natural burials in Maine, in Limington and in Orrington. There are only about six operating green cemeteries in the United States, but many more are planned, according to those tracking the trend. - - - - http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=143467&ac=PHnws Russia schools ban "cult of death" Halloween REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - October 31, 2007 MOSCOW - Moscow schools have been ordered to ban students from celebrating the cult of the dead, better known as Halloween, despite the widespread popularity of the imported festival to Russia. Halloween is being forced underground because it "includes religious elements, the cult of death, the mockery of death," a spokesman for the city's education department Alexander Gavrilov said on Wednesday. "It's not an attempt to block the celebration of this holiday completely, just in schools and colleges," he added. Pumpkins and images of witches are widespread across Russia, with many bars organizing special fancy dress parties, despite the efforts of the Kremlin and especially the Russian Orthodox Church to curb enthusiasm for non-native festivities. "This is destructive for the minds and the spiritual and moral health of pupils," said Gavrilov, saying the ban had been recommended by psychiatrists. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071031/lf_nm_life/russia_halloween_ban_dc_1 FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.