Science and Stardust Readings for a Non-Religious Funeral
Planning a funeral or memorial without religion often leaves one hard question: what do we read? Many families want words that are honest about death and still full of wonder. Science has some of the most beautiful answers we know. The atoms that made the person we lost came from stars. None of them are destroyed. The light that once touched their face became part of everyone who looked at them.
This page brings together readings built on that science: four original readings written for Swayanta that you are free to use, a classic poem in the public domain, and a few short lines from scientists, with notes on how to use them.
Free to use: you may read, print, share and adapt the original readings on this page at any funeral, memorial or celebration of life, without asking. A mention of swayanta.com is welcome, but never required.
Original Readings
Each takes about a minute to read aloud. Replace [Name] with the name of the person you are remembering.
Made of Stars
Long before there was a sun, there were other stars.
They burned for millions of years, and when they died, they scattered what they had made: the carbon, the oxygen, the iron.
That dust drifted for ages. It gathered into a new star and a new world, and in time it became the ground, the rain, the bread and the breath that made [Name].
The iron in their blood was forged in exploding stars. The calcium in their bones and the oxygen in every breath they took were made in stars that lived and died long before Earth existed.
They were made of stars. And stars do not keep what they make. They give it away, so that something new can live.
Today, [Name] does the same.
Still Here
Nothing that [Name] was made of has been lost. Not one atom.
The water that was part of them is already on its way to becoming rain. The carbon will rise into the air and come down again as leaves, as grass, as the green of spring.
In time, the air we all breathe will carry a little of what they were made of.
Science has a law for this. Matter is not destroyed. Energy is not destroyed. They change form, and they move on.
So when you feel the rain, or see a tree come into leaf, or simply take a breath, you are closer to [Name] than you think.
They are not gone. They are part of everything.
The Light You Gave
Every time someone looked at [Name], light did something remarkable.
It left the sun or the lamp, touched their face, and travelled into the eyes of the person looking at them.
There, each tiny particle of light changed the shape of a single molecule, and the brain turned that change into a face it would remember.
In an ordinary room, a face sends back something like a hundred thousand trillion particles of light every second. Over a lifetime, the number is beyond counting.
All of that light found its way to us. For an instant, it became part of the people who saw them.
And what it carried, we keep.
The Numbers of a Life
[Name] lived for [number] days.
In that time, their heart beat around [number] times, without once being asked.
They took around [number] breaths. The sun rose for them [number] times.
And the Earth carried them [number] kilometres around the sun: [number] full journeys, with all of us along for the ride.
These are not small numbers. They are the measure of a life fully, stubbornly, beautifully lived.
And every one of those heartbeats, every breath, every sunrise, was shared with someone in this room.
To fill in The Numbers of a Life, enter their dates in Swayanta's memorial mode. It calculates their heartbeats, breaths, sunrises, distance through space and trips around the sun, for free, and nothing you enter is stored.
A Classic Poem: Walt Whitman
The closing lines of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (section 52, from the 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass) are among the best-loved non-religious funeral readings. Whitman imagines himself returning to the soil and the grass, and waiting for us there. The poem is in the public domain, so you can read and print it freely.
from Song of Myself
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Short Lines From Scientists
These are well loved, but the authors' wider works are under copyright. Quoting a line or two with the author's name is generally fine; for longer passages, especially in a printed programme, check the source first.
- Carl Sagan, in the television series Cosmos (1980): "The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff."
- Aaron Freeman's commentary for NPR, which begins "You want a physicist to speak at your funeral", is one of the most popular secular readings of all. Read our line-by-line check of its physics, and take the wording from the original NPR transcript.
More than two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Lucretius made the same point in On the Nature of Things: nothing returns to nothing, and nature builds each new thing out of what came before. Science has spent the centuries since showing how right he was.
How to Use These Readings
- Choose one or two. A reading of one to three minutes suits most services. Each original reading on this page takes about a minute.
- Make it theirs. Add their name, a place they loved, or their own numbers. Small details make a reading feel written for them, because now it is.
- Read slowly. Practise once out loud. It is fine to pause, and fine if your voice breaks. Everyone listening understands.
- Credit the authors. In a printed order of service, put the author's name under each reading. For the original readings here, a mention of swayanta.com is welcome but optional.
- Pair science with memory. These readings work best next to stories about the person. The stars explain where they came from; the stories explain who they were.
If you want to understand the science behind these readings, start with where our atoms go when we die and whether we are really made of stardust.
Sources
Whitman, W. (1892), Leaves of Grass: "Song of Myself", section 52. Public domain; text checked against the Project Gutenberg edition.
Sagan, C. (1980), Cosmos, PBS: "The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff." As quoted by The Planetary Society.
Freeman, A. (2005), NPR, All Things Considered: the commentary beginning "You want a physicist to speak at your funeral." Transcript.
Lucretius (1st century BC), De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Book I: the principle that nothing is created from nothing and nothing returns to nothing.
The science in the original readings is explained, with sources, in our articles on stardust, the iron in your blood, where our atoms go and the physicist's eulogy.
Fill in “The Numbers of a Life” with their own heartbeats, breaths and sunrises.
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