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Graceful presence: Funeral hospitality

Those of us who work in the church know how trivial, vain and self-serving the “institutional” church (as we used to call it in seminary—as if there were any other kind) can be. But we also wonder what we would do without the church. How could you celebrate Christmas without the church? How could you wake up in the dark of Easter morning without the church? Where else would one turn when one’s spirit is assaulted and one’s emotions are raw from loss if not to the church and the people who are the church?