Belonging Together

I can't remember whether I've posted this before - if so, it's posted again! I wrote it a while back for a funeral service I was preparing, and I've used it a few times since. It says what I wanted it to say, and I hope provides a message that transcends the boundaries of doctrine, faith and unbelief.  I've tweaked it to use at different stages in the funeral or memorial ceremony, but here is the form in which I've used it as a word of farewell and committal.

What does it mean, to belong together? Simply that, on our own, even the greatest of us is only quite small. We are formed and made to be part of something greater than our mere selves: to give and to receive, to love and to be loved, to be cared for and to care. We are measured not by what we get and gather and own, but by what we give: within our families and with our children, in the nurture and teaching we have offered; among our friends, in our loyalty, and in our sharing of joys and tears; and within the wider world, in service and compassion, in perseverance and honest work. Like leaves on a tree, one day it will be our time to fall, and for some this will be too soon and out of season. Here we say our farewell to [N], and here we commit the body in which we have known [her] to the elements of the earth from which we are formed. May we do so with this thought in mind: that what each of us has given to the greater whole really matters; each life matters, each person matters, and what we have given of ourselves is what will live on.