AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The Maine Legislature is considering a proposal to create a new option for sending off the dead — a flaming funeral pyre.
Anyone who has watched “Game of Thrones” or “The Phantom Menace” has seen a fictional funeral pyre, with bodies cremated outdoors on a flaming bed of timber. It’s currently legal in only two locations in the U.S. — both of them in Colorado, the Sun Journal reported.
A bill before the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee would allow a nonprofit that possesses at least 20 acres to carry out open-air cremations and to scatter the ashes on the property.
A nonprofit called Good Ground, Great Beyond hopes to have outdoor funeral pyres on a 63-acre forested parcel in Dresden.
A funeral pyre is a natural way to bring together earth and sky, the seen and the unseen, said the founder, Angela Lutzenberger, a hospice minister. It also allows loved ones to be present, as opposed to a conventional cremation.
Maine is already the nation’s leader in the percentage of people who choose cremation over burial, with about three-quarters of Mainers opting for cremation as a less expensive alternative.
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