Caring for the Spirit - Reverend Alison Adams - YouTube

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBWXDKeLSkA

Jan here.
A video of a talk by a member of the Leicester Cathedral team which I found by surfing from Pete's Blog on the Richard III & Leicester Cathedral site. There are a couple of other links in Pete's Blog that I haven't time to chase now but I did listen to this. If you are interested or concerned by the coming reinterment ceremony you may want to view it.

I have had a Branch e-mail saying that Philippa is fighting to have Richards remains laid out naturally and not in an ossuary. Just what are Leicester trying to prove? This is an anointed King of England who is probably one of the best Kings this country has ever had. Someone who cared about the people of this country despite being a man of his time and looking after his own family.The Tudors were a disaster for this country and they were buried with dignity and pomp.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBWXDKeLSkA

Jan here.
A video of a talk by a member of the Leicester Cathedral team which I found by surfing from Pete's Blog on the Richard III & Leicester Cathedral site. There are a couple of other links in Pete's Blog that I haven't time to chase now but I did listen to this. If you are interested or concerned by the coming reinterment ceremony you may want to view it.

Jan again. I think we have to be fair to Rev Alison Adams in that she refers to Ricardian sentiments but is probably speaking to an audience of Leicester Cathedral attenders. Ricardians will be pulled in, including those of all faiths & none, as is said nowadays, & despite her caveats my feeling is they won't all meditate first on the Risen Christ as committed Christians hope.
On 29 May 2014, at 21:57, "'SandraMachin' sandramachin@... []" <> wrote:

Thank you, Jan. I've just watched/listened to it. Do they yet fully realize what they will have on their hands? They might not want Richard's tomb to be a shrine', but I think they'll find it difficult to prevent it. Not a truly religious shrine, as if he were a saint, but somewhere his countless supporters will want to go to be near him. And I noticed that his bones will be in an ossuary. I wasn't sure why a modern tomb design would speak more than a traditional one, but that is a matter of personal taste, I think. It might have been better to state that ALL present-day Christian faiths are the natural successors of the single Church he held so dear. They are all different in one way or another, and there were conflicting views in his time, but they are and were Christian. Richard possessed the Bible in English, and while the language of that time was rather different from today, the messages within remain the same. (This is just my own view.) Sandra =^..^= From: mailto: Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 8:11 PM To: Subject: Caring for the Spirit - Reverend Alison Adams - YouTube

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBWXDKeLSkA

Jan here.
A video of a talk by a member of the Leicester Cathedral team which I found by surfing from Pete's Blog on the Richard III & Leicester Cathedral site. There are a couple of other links in Pete's Blog that I haven't time to chase now but I did listen to this. If you are interested or concerned by the coming reinterment ceremony you may want to view it.

I agree, Sandra.

I found her talk inconsistent in the extreme and also partisan. As a talk on Death & Dying, her role was not to provide a defence of what Leicester Cathedral may or may not be planning but she did undertake this, giving yet more official "validity" to what is planned.

She states - " current culture also provides other creative resting places at least for ashes. The favourite spot, where Grandad used to like to sit, often visited, the garden, the mountain top even..."

This is not confined to current culture - people are buried where they had connections. But this is most definitely not happening for Richard. Oh the irony.... Buried in a church he never knew in a town he had no personal connection with - and in fact a great amount of denial currently being aired by Leicester campaigners of Richard having connections in the north at all (Mayor Soulsby mentioning Richard's "rather tenuous links" with York in the Press Conference video; suggestions he should be known as Richard of Leicester in future (not entirely joking either ) ). This is brand new anti-Ricardian propaganda in the making....roll over, Morton....

She talks about shrines and then says - "For some it is just giving honour to a remarkable holy life. We would discourage anyone from seeing Richard in that light: on the contrary part of Richard's symbolic significance is precisely his flawed humanity."

Once more, Leicester cannot refrain from insinuating that Richard was a flawed or dishonourable man. He is to be made an example of. I find this attitude to anyone deceased, let alone a king, abhorrent.

She then speaks about grave goods and symbolic inclusions - mentioning that even her son did this for his granny, then adds -

"What has this to do with Richard? He won't have beloved artefacts in his ossuary. Well one thing he wasn't was a saint!"

But she wasn't talking about saints having grave goods but ordinary people. But yet again, a slur on his character for no good reason. Does she think it amusing to slur an already maligned man in this way, without having to explain herself - in what way was he a flawed man?


I won't dissect the entire talk, but I found it very partial all through. And an ossuary box, precisely because it is intended that the remains be kept scientifically sterile.....

Sorry but it just does not square up -

""We have taken the same care over where to bury Richard as any grieving family might take over laying to rest their loved one."

A grieving family does not refer to their loved one as an example of "flawed humanity". And their "where" extended to "where in St Martins" as opposed to "where in the country". And collateral descendants who do care very much about their ancestor were given no say at all, not even to suggest broad consultation. "Leicester" (this "we" that she is referring to, and why is she part of the 'we'?) took the entire decision to themselves and have absolutely held the king as their own possession. As Mike Pitts reveals in his book, Richard Buckley commented (approx.) "If Philippa had come and asked to exhume Richard so he could be buried in St George's Windsor, Leicester would never have agreed to do the dig".

I'm sure differing opinions here will never agree. For me, there is no honour in laying a man to rest *again*! in a place he would never have chosen (and everyone is agreed he would never have chosen Leicester), which is also the town of his final post-mortem humiliation.

I sat and watched the talk on YouTube late last night and it seemed perfectly reasonable and respectful to me.
I find it hard to see the point that Richard had no connection with Leicester. Of course he did, he fought and died in a great battle very near there.
He was taken to be buried there by his enemies, and that is his story.
That is history, that is what happened. No matter how much we may wish to make it different, to make it "right," we can't change that, it is what happened and we have absolute proof of that now his body has been found.

Jess
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

But she's generalising to make a wider point, i.e. we're *all* examples of flawed humanity.  That's what the whole talk's about - going from the particular to something all-encompassing. The very fact that she was speaking under the banner of LOROS, a hospice, is a clue to that.
And, really, re your Richard Buckley quote: would any council anywhere have agreed a dig under different conditions?  But the Secretary of State could still have amended the licence had he thought fit.  Mike Pitts writes about this in his most recent blog:
http://mikepitts.wordpress.com/
Anyway, yes, people will never agree, which is why I'd rather we all just moved on. 

Jonathan

From: colyngbourne <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Friday, 30 May 2014, 12:32
Subject: Re: Caring for the Spirit - Reverend Alison Adams - YouTube

  Sorry but it just does not square up -
""We have taken the same care over where to bury Richard as any grieving family might take over laying to rest their loved one."

A grieving family does not refer to their loved one as an example of "flawed humanity". And their "where" extended to "where in St Martins" as opposed to "where in the country". And collateral descendants who do care very much about their ancestor were given no say at all, not even to suggest broad consultation. "Leicester" (this "we" that she is referring to, and why is she part of the 'we'?) took the entire decision to themselves and have absolutely held the king as their own possession. As Mike Pitts reveals in his book, Richard Buckley commented (approx.) "If Philippa had come and asked to exhume Richard so he could be buried in St George's Windsor, Leicester would never have agreed to do the dig".

I'm sure differing opinions here will never agree. For me, there is no honour in laying a man to rest *again*! in a place he would never have chosen (and everyone is agreed he would never have chosen Leicester), which is also the town of his final post-mortem humiliation.

He was the most human King of his time and a lot more human than the Tudors, Stuarts and probably the Hanoverians who came after him. This is the whole point about Richard he was the complete opposite to the myth put about by Tudor chroniclers. I am sure he was no angel but he definitely cared about people. Mary