From their earliest years and into young adulthood, he and his siblings faced dire consequences for misbehavior.

As they grappled with the struggle to “be good” in the eyes of their father and church their shared trauma created an unbreakable bond between them. Paul, now a funeral celebrant, talks about his experience creating eulogies for the unchurched, the way in which grief stories are love stories, and how leaving the church made him feel more Christian.

Paul Boardman is a writer and inter-faith Funeral Chaplain and Celebrant for SCI-Dignity Memorial, living in Seattle, Washington. He grew up in Tokyo, Japan, and holds the farcically-named “Masters of Divinity” from Princeton Theological Seminary. Two of his enduring thematic obsessions in writing are: what constitutes a good life in the face of death/loss and the nature of yearning, even greed, for love. His  work has been featured in The Good Men Project, Gravel, P.S. I Love You and ICCFA magazine, and in the anthologies Just a Little More Time, We Came to Say and We Came Back to Say.