Yeah, I’d personally handle a family funeral (for a person who happens to be rationalist) very different from a “rationalist funeral.” (My friend who died a couple years ago had a large number of rationalist friends. His family held a religious funeral in his home town. Almost exclusively rationalist friends in NYC and Berkeley had respective funerals that were able to basically assume ‘rationalist culture’.)
This is a pretty important distinction and this post was almost entirely intended to frame the “cultural rationalist” funeral/memorial. I’ll update the OP to clarify. (It turns out that much of the advice here is still good for a mixed/non-denominational funeral – a simple ‘take turns talking’ style funeral culminating in a final reflection/farewell’ seems generally appropriate. But I’d have framed it much differently and had a different journey towards that end point if I were optimizing for “non-denominational” over “rationalist.)
Yeah, I’d personally handle a family funeral (for a person who happens to be rationalist) very different from a “rationalist funeral.” (My friend who died a couple years ago had a large number of rationalist friends. His family held a religious funeral in his home town. Almost exclusively rationalist friends in NYC and Berkeley had respective funerals that were able to basically assume ‘rationalist culture’.)
This is a pretty important distinction and this post was almost entirely intended to frame the “cultural rationalist” funeral/memorial. I’ll update the OP to clarify. (It turns out that much of the advice here is still good for a mixed/non-denominational funeral – a simple ‘take turns talking’ style funeral culminating in a final reflection/farewell’ seems generally appropriate. But I’d have framed it much differently and had a different journey towards that end point if I were optimizing for “non-denominational” over “rationalist.)