Edgar Allan Poe finally getting proper funeral (160 years later!)

Awright, before anyone get's too freaked-out: that is not the real Edgar Allan Poe in a pine box! But it is an incredibly life (or death)-like simulation created by Baltimore-based effects wiz Eric Supensky, commissioned by Jeff Jerome (looking on "Edgar"'s body) of the Poe House and Museum.

A hundred and sixty years after Poe's ignoble death and hasty funeral, the father of modern horror is about to get the funeral that he's always deserved. The Poe House has held public viewings of "Poe" this week, which will culminate in a true period-style funeral this coming Sunday...

Poe's cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced his death publicly. Fewer than 10 people attended the hasty funeral for one of the 19th century's greatest writers. And the injustices piled on. Poe's tombstone was destroyed before it could be installed, when a train derailed and crashed into a stonecutter's yard. Rufus Griswold, a Poe enemy, published a libellous obituary that damaged Poe's reputation for decades.

But on Sunday, Poe's funeral will get an elaborate do-over, with two services expected to draw about 350 people each - the most a former church next to his grave can hold. Actors portraying Poe's contemporaries and other long-dead writers and artists will pay their respects, reading eulogies adapted from their writings about Poe.
"We are following the proper etiquette for funerals. We want to make it as realistic as possible," said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum.

Advance tickets are sold out, although Jerome will make some seats available at the door to ensure packed houses. Fans are travelling from as far away as Vietnam...

The body will lie in state for 12 hours Wednesday at the Poe House, a tiny rowhome in a gritty section of west Baltimore. Visitors are invited to pay their respects.

Following the viewing will be an all-night vigil at Poe's grave at Westminster Burying Ground. Anyone who attends will have the opportunity to deliver a tribute.
On Sunday morning, a horse-drawn carriage will transport the replica of Poe's body from his former home to the graveyard for the funeral.

Actor John Astin, best known as Gomez Addams on TV's "The Addams Family," will serve as master of ceremonies.

"It's sort of a way of saying, 'Well, Eddie, your first funeral wasn't a very good one, but we're going to try to make it up to you, because we have so much respect for you,"' said Astin, who toured as Poe for years in a one-man show.

The service won't be a total lovefest, however. The first eulogy will come from none other than Griswold.

"People are asking me, 'Jeff, why are you inviting him? He hated Poe!"' Jerome said. "The reason is, most of these people defended Poe in response to what he said about Poe's life, so we can't have this service without having old Rufus sitting in the front row, spewing forth his hatred."

Eulogies will follow from actors portraying, among others, Sarah Helen Whitman, a minor poet whom Poe courted after his wife's death, and Walt Whitman, who attended the dedication of Poe's new gravestone in 1875 but didn't feel well enough to speak. Writers and artists influenced by Poe, including Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Hitchcock, will also be represented.

"Annoyed as I am with Baltimore sometimes, I have to give them credit," said Philadelphia-based Poe scholar Edward Pettit, who argues his city was of greater importance to Poe's life and literary career. "Baltimore has done an awful lot to maintain the legacy of Poe over the last 100-some years."

Look under the floorboards here for more about Poe's fitting final farewell!

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Don't sin at your own funeral, sez cult leader Johnny Robertson

If anyone still harbored doubts about Johnny Robertson - leader of the local cult calling itself the "Church of Christ" - those were erased during last night's broadcast of What Does the Bible Say? on WGSR Star 47.1 from Reidsville.

During the program, which included pre-recorded footage of Robertson speaking yesterday at his "Martinsville Church of Christ", Robertson exclaimed that to have the wrong funeral is grounds enough to displease God! Robertson told his followers to make sure that no instrumental music be played during their last rites.

Here's the transcript of what Johnny Robertson said at "Martinsville Church of Christ" on August 16, 2009 (with bold-faced text indicating spoken emphasis)...

"If you haven't determined how your funeral is going to go, you need to! Because you have family members who do not agree with what I just quoted from the Bible in Ephesians 5:19 about speaking to yourselves in songs, hymn and spiritual song! They will have you in your funeral, all kinds of pianos and stuff like that playing, and you won't want that not at all! But if you haven't said so, guess what? Your family gets to do what they want to do. So let me encourage you today, as we sing that song and we think about going home: when you leave us here behind, as you go home, make sure you leave us some instructions and your family some instructions so EVERYBODY knows how your funeral is SUPPOSED to go. We won't want people dishonoring you, your memory when you leave, what we mean by that is dishonoring you before God. So make sure you make those instructions, young or old, and give them to somebody else who is faithful and will make sure those things get carried out."

So according to Johnny Robertson, you are sinning before God if you have musical instruments playing at your funeral. Which makes it all so vital that you leave explicit directions prohibiting pianos, organs and the like from being used when you can't raise any objections from your casket or urn.

That is hyper-legalism to the nuttiest extreme that I have ever heard of.

Heck, Robertson and his followers are worse than the Pharisees were! Jesus took the Pharisees to task for the ridiculous lengths they went to in following the law. In the case of the "Church of Christ" cult (again, it has nothing to do with the regular Churches of Christ) they can't follow the law nearly enough so people like Robertson have to make up law that's not even scriptural! Ephesians 5:19, from the New International Version, simply states "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord". Nowhere does it ever say in the Bible that to have instrumental music is an affront to God.

And then there's the glaringly obvious fact that for all his boasting about "knowing the Bible better than anyone", that Johnny Robertson does not have much of a sincere knowledge of the Bible at all. Because if he did, Robertson should already understand that...

"We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."

-- 2nd Corinthians 5:8 (NIV)

We can't dishonor God after we have already left this world and gone into His presence. And not Johnny Robertson or anyone else should have this kind of unhealthy focus on whether our funerals are "right or wrong" anyway.

It's the life which Christ has given us that matters most of all: that life free by grace according to the rule of love, and not enslaved to the rule of law.

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