Elgin church revisits traditional cemetery
Under a spreading crabapple tree on the corner of its Elgin property, Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren has carved out a beautiful new interpretation of the traditional church graveyard.
The Peace Memorial Garden, a serene synthesis of shrubbery, brick pavers and flowering plants, will serve as a final resting place for the ashes of departed members whose families choose to inter them at the church.
The garden was dedicated last month and already has one interment. Three more are planned for the near future, including former associate pastor June Gibble, who died last year of ALS. Her ashes will be interred this weekend.
It was Gibble who actually got the project started, said Roger Anna, a member of the garden planning committee. Gibble told her husband, Jay, that she wanted to be cremated and interred at the church. After her death, Jay Gibble started sizing up the possibilities and eventually chaired the planning committee.
"It's been put together in the last year to fulfill June's wishes as well as to provide an interment space for others who choose cremation," Anna said. "It's becoming increasingly popular with members of our church for a variety of reasons, primarily financial as well as the stewardship of the land."
Ashes are buried in an 8- by 6-foot brick enclosure with 96 spaces, Anna said. It looks just like a raised flower bed and in fact does have a shallow sedum ground cover planted on top.
But no containers.
"They have their specific spaces, but there are no containers being used unless it's biodegradable," Anna said.
"It's kind of a collective space where people's ashen remains can be buried and over time can commingle together," said new associate pastor Audrey deCoursey. "The underlying theological principle is that we are together a church community in life, and we continue to be a community in death as well."
DeCoursey said the garden is not quite finished yet. The congregation still hopes to add a bench and possibly a peace pole, a monument with the phrase "May peace prevail on earth" in several languages.
Eventually, persons who are interred there also will have their names engraved at the site, Anna said.
"When we initially started talking about the concept, we talked about how in the past, graveyards and cemeteries generally were associated with churches, and members would be buried, in most cases, in the churchyard," Anna said. "We felt this Peace Memorial Garden would be in line with that."
Shortly after the garden was dedicated, Highland Avenue welcomed deCoursey as the new associate pastor. She said the congregation's strong commitment to peace work is part of what drew her to accept the call.
DeCoursey comes to Elgin fresh from seminary in Berkeley, Ca. A native of Oak Park, she went into the ministry "because I was interested in the way pastoral ministry is an institution of community building," she said.
"The job is all about nurturing connections between people, sharing stories and feeding people in body and spirit so that they can go out and do their ministry for the world."
But deCoursey sees herself as more of a "community organizer" than preacher or shepherd, "helping people to see their common identity, see what they share and use what they share as a people to work for the common good."
Like most Church of the Brethren members, her passion is for peace and an end to violence of all kinds - in war, in the home, in the "violence humans cause to the rest of God's creation," she said.
In seminary, deCoursey was part of a group that took a "holistic approach" to war-not only by protesting the U.S. presence in Iraq but also by sending care packages to friends serving there in the military.
She joins Pastor Joel Kline in leadership at the Highland Avenue church.
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