Bishop Tutu: "An Unpretentious Monk's Homegoing"

From the very wise Amy Cunningham, about the burial of Desmond Tutu:

The church setting was glorious, and the other bishops wore their robes, but surely the great man who helped upend apartheid would exit in a mahogany, walnut or cherry casket with brass rails of some sort. And wait a minute—what’s going on there with the slender foot-end of the Archbishop’s pine coffin resting naked, skirt-less on the church truck? It’s not landing normally. No rails on the sides, just rope. Tiny fist of flowers for a significant public figure like that? Yes. It’s not that the funeral directors I know staring at photos like the one above—longing only for a dignified look—are hoping to up-sell the theologian’s handlers. It’s just that some folks in funeral work instinctively struggle to pair humility with high stature. In truth, I also would have preferred a truck skirt or bier, or modern catafalque in church, but the rolling truck, in the end, had a nimbleness to it, and spoke to transparency. What you see is what you get: an unpretentious monk’s homegoing.