On death and ecology

 

Death is the precursor to life. I exist, because my father’s DNA and my mother’s DNA tore themselves apart, disembowelled from top to bottom, and instead cleaved to the other. John’s account of Jesus coming into the world notes, ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ (John 1:5) Darkness first, then, ‘Let there be light.’ Darkness, not overcoming light, but from whence light shines. Death does not bring Life to an end, but ushers life in.

There was a time when the whole earth was barren, save for a garden, planted by God. There, the rain fell, dying and being laid to rest in the ground; to be drawn up by the roots and trunks of trees. There, the leaves fell, decaying into the soil, making it ever more fertile. Death is the precursor to life. (I have proposed, elsewhere, that the Garden is a metaphor for the Babylonian exile, and the barren earth for the abandoned territory of Judah. This theme carries through exile, through invasion, through siege and destruction, through the re-emergence of remnant communities over again.)

When Adam and Eve are driven out from the garden, this is not an ontological change in human nature—we have always had the capacity for good or evil; and always had the gift of death and life, neither of which can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus—but an ecological change for the wider creation. Our experience of death—our experience of death; death already existed, as fossil records and coal seams testify—and therefore also our experience of life—is no longer cradled in the garden, but spreads through the whole world: first, death; then life, as promised. Our creaturely labour enables all creation to die, and die well—including dying to self, and to sin, which is to put ourselves first and against our neighbour—in order that it may be taken up into the grace of perpetually renewing life, ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 6:23)

He is the light that shines in the darkness. He is the branch, because he is the root, the one who, having been lifted-up in death, lifts us up with him in life. He is the tree of life, and the tree from which his own cross is hewn (hence Nordic mythology, written down in the thirteenth century, and which paganises Christianity, depicts Odin hanging himself from the sacred tree Yggdrasil to gain wisdom and power). He is the seed buried in the soil, dying to produce fruit a hundred-fold. We die, not because we have fallen from grace, but because we are created to represent the One who from eternity has laid their life down, that life might flow to others. We rise again, only in and with and by him. The whole earth is filled with his suffering and his glory. The made-new earth will not banish the death that births life, only Death as a foreboding cipher for estrangement from God and neighbour.

What might this mean for the mission of God on which we are sent out among our neighbours?

What does the reign of God in this suffering, glorious Christ Jesus look like in our neighbourhood?

What are the implications for creation care—one of the marks of mission—that does not empty the earth of her natural resources with insatiable hunger, but does enable that quality of dying that will usher in new life?

 

Paddington

 

For her Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Queen Elizabeth II made a short film of her inviting Paddington Bear to afternoon tea. When she died, social media was flooded with pictures of Paddington taking her hand and leading her from this world to the next. Of course, she had also jumped out of a helicopter with 007, and, given the ending to the latest film in the franchise, it could be argued that James Bond would have been a better escort.

Today my wife showed me a picture circulating online of Paddington escorting Coolio from this world to the next, with the comment—my wife’s, not a caption on the image—'Why? Who has decided that Paddington should be the Grim Reaper?’

Perhaps it is because Paddington is a refugee, a bear who sought and found welcome in a new land. Perhaps this makes him a suitable guide to whatever lies beyond death.

Coolio came to public attention in the UK for his rap hit Gangsta’s Paradise, which riffs off (Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise, but also) Psalm 23. The lyrics open, ‘As I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,’ introducing the story of a gang member who is feared by his rivals and looked up to by the other members of his gang but who is secretly afraid, noting, ‘I’m 23 now but will I live to see 24?’

Death is the great unknown, and, in my experience at least, a majority of people do not believe it to be an end to personal existence. But, in my experience, many people are fearful for what lies beyond. Not that they fear hell, or assume heaven, but that they envisage a journey that continues through further tribulations and for which they must plead God to keep their loved ones safe. In many ways, the northeast is the most Mediaeval context I have ministered in, and it is fascinating for that. Our cultural expectations are thickly woven.

The valley of the shadow of death runs through the heart of Psalm 23, a dry wadi the sheep journey up and down again many times over the course of their lives, just as we navigate the contours of bereavement many times over, rendered different each time by the flash flood of another loss. And the singer sings of the Good Shepherd, who carries, and knows how to use, a rod and a staff. One is long and thin, and used to steer the sheep along the path or lift them up when they fall. The other is a stout cudgel, used to drive back predators that hide among the rocks. This is a show of confidence, of leadership and of selfless strength.

As divine revelation of the mortal heart, the Bible speaks of death and what lies beyond in so many different ways that the only reasonable response of faith is an agnosticism about details and an unshakeable trust that within the reign of God in and through Christ Jesus, all shall be well. The Good Shepherd of Psalm 23 is a pool of hope that runs deep and does not fail.

Paddington is a heart-warming story. But there is no need to ask him to take on more than a small bear can, well, bear. If you would like to talk about your hopes and fears to do with death, I’m happy to have that conversation.

 

On death and dying

 

Two very different funeral visits today. Every family, every life, every story, every act of hospitality differs from the next.

Two men, both with sons named Andrew, both of whose funerals will be conducted by another Andrew, in the same church, on the same day.

One had terminal cancer. Knew when it was time to stop fighting. Called the family together around him, told each one in turn exactly what they meant to him, said what he needed to say and then fell into a deep sleep from which he never awoke. Precious final hours together. This is that good death our whole lives are preparation for, and this act of love will be a comfort to his family. And while there are no guarantees regarding the circumstances of our death, we can plan for a good death, starting today. There’s a story in the Bible, too long for a funeral reading, of Jacob blessing his many sons, one by one, naming their strengths, and their flaws, before God, hallowing lives that will continue beyond his own. What blessing will you leave?

The other had Alzheimer’s. He also died peacefully, which is perhaps what most of us would want, but, in truth, few of us get. He had been, for many years, secretary of the local history society. Guardians of a collective memory that stretches back beyond living memory, and wider than personal memory. And it may seem ironic, and even cruel, that the secretary of such an august association should have his memories erased, one by one. And yet, this is a perfect metaphor, for none of us are ourselves unto ourself alone, we are all held in a network of archived, collective memory, of small stories of love that matter more than anyone looking in from the outside could ever understand. What stories hold you, when you can no longer hold on, to hold your mortal remains and your memory before God’s face?

Rest in peace; and rise in glory. In the peace and the glory of the One who is Lord of the living and the dead.

 

Speaking of dying

 

In my culture, we seek reassurance that the death of someone known to us was peaceful. But dying is hardly ever peaceful, and for good reason. What we actually need is a new vocabulary.

Dying is rarely peaceful, because dying is a labour-work.

Almost all of us have participated in labour once before, for birth is a collaborative (if not equal) effort between a mother and baby; whenever either one is unable to play their part, that is when we speak of complications. And though we have no conscious memory of our birth, the body knows what the body knows. Many, though by no means all, women experience subsequent labours, but giving birth to someone else is a different, albeit related, work. Dying is our second labour to be birthed: once, before, from our mother’s womb into this world; now, from the womb of this world into the world beyond. This is true—our bodies know it to be so—whether we believe that the world beyond shares a high degree of continuity with this one, or believe that, from the perspective of this world, what lies beyond is oblivion. This is true, even if we did not labour our own birth, and do not have that memory to draw on. It is also the case that some are ‘ripped untimely’ from either womb, whether a C-section birth or a sudden and violent death.

Like childbirth, the labour of dying can take days; comes with laboured (not a pun) breathing; is, if we are fortunate, attended, by midwives who watch over us, for labour-work is not only work but work at our most vulnerable. We would not usually ask, of a new mother, “Was the birth peaceful?” though I note the wishful thinking of Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. But we might say, “Mother and baby did really well, and both are resting now” or, “It was a difficult birth, but she is resting now.” What we, who anxiously wait for news, are really asking is, is the news good?

It is not so much a peaceful death we need as rest once our labour is done. And to make peace with the knowledge that this second birth awaits us all. And, perhaps most of all, to see dying as the culmination of living, not its diminishing. Then we can rightly say, let us release the breath we have been holding in, and give thanks. This is not to deny grief, and the importance of grief-work. On the contrary, it may lift the anxiety that can complicate this labour of love of those who remain.

 

The wind and the leaves

 

I set out to go and kneel
at a bedside where death advances
and the kingdom of God draws near,
and the pavements I walked on
were thick with fallen leaves,
red, yellow, tan,
the resplendent glory of the dying.
All along the street the wind
was making leaves to circle-dance
before me, so that I wanted to clap like a child,
and say, “Again! Again!”
It had no meaning except joy.

When leaves are green
and bursting out in silent song,
the wind gives them an audible voice
with which to sing.
When leaves die,
the same wind lifts them up
to dance.
Living and dying, alike,
the breath of God draws out
our song, our circle-dance,
makes every passing moment holy.
We rest, and rise, in peace and glory.

In defence of funerals

As someone who takes funerals, I observe a growing trend for essentially private committals followed by a public service of thanksgiving. It would appear that there are several factors at play here.

One factor is that in our society death has become a taboo, perhaps the only taboo currently alive and well. We are terrified to death by our mortality and go to great lengths to pretend it isn’t real. And so, we naturally assume that we are doing the friends of the deceased a favour in sparing them being confronted by mortality in the form of a coffin. But it is fact that we have a psychological need to see the coffin, not for that awful word ‘closure’—there is no such thing—but in order, accumulatively, to overcome our fear. And we are denying the last gift we can give to those who have loved us to more and more people.

Another factor is that we do not want to break down in front of other people. This is exceedingly complex, a mix of (at least) shame at the thought of being seen to lose self-control in public, and genuine concern not to place this burden on our friends. But in so doing we deny our friends the opportunity to help carry our burdens, and ourselves the help our friends long to offer. We leave ourselves alone and terribly exposed in our grief; rather than gathered-up and even, appropriately, hidden within the grief of a community. It makes what is inevitably a hard situation to be in far harder than it needs to be.

A third factor is the recent growth of humanist funeral celebrants. This is not a bad thing in itself, in a pluralist society we need non-religious options. But in general, they do not yet really understand what they are doing. They often do a very good tribute, a celebration of the life; but are ill-equipped to handle other psychological needs. And they have raised the expectation that you can have the bespoke occasion you want. But a popularist vision of what we are told we should want, as consumers, is not necessarily what is best for society. We are often told, on such occasions, that ‘Name would not want us to be sad’. When I die, I hope that those who knew me will be sad. Not only or always sad, but sad nonetheless. If they are not, I will have wasted my life. But regardless of what I hope, people will be sad. To dismiss their grief, and insist on celebration, a brave face and a rigor mortis smile, is not loving, and verges on (unintentional) fascism.

A final and pragmatic factor is the extent to which cremation has replaced burial (and burial in civic graveyards replaced burial in churchyards). Crematoria are often not especially local, and if the main part of the service takes place in a church, many people are unable to go on to the committal, and uncomfortable with waiting a long time for the family to return to a wake. It can be smoother—at least logistically—to turn the occasion on its head. Such circumstances call for flexibility, sensitivity, and creativity. However, they are not, in my experience, a driver for the trend I am seeing.

The service of thanksgiving, as opposed to a funeral, is proving popular among those who are religious enough (or respectful enough of the religious sensibilities of the deceased) to not want an atheist funeral, but agnostic enough (or sensitive to the diversity of views among those assembled) to want religious-lite. Conversely, services of thanksgiving are increasingly popular among certain churches, especially those of a more evangelical tradition, that want to emphasise resurrection hope and feel that a funeral gives death too great a part.

For all its well-meaning intentions, I have grave misgivings (no pun intended) about this trend. The funeral service does not magically appear out of thin air but draws on wisdom and experience to do several things that can only be done as the work of the people, together. The Church of England’s funeral service sets these things out in this way:

‘We have come here today

to remember before God our brother/sister Name;

to give thanks for his/her life;

to commend him/her to God our merciful redeemer and judge;

to commit his/her body to be buried/cremated,

and to comfort one another in our grief.’

All of these things flow from the first word, We. I have taken funerals where, at their insistence, there have been only two people present. They are more harrowing than funerals where there is no one present. A church path or a crematorium drive is not of a set length: they grow longer travelled alone.

The work of remembering and giving thanks for a life must be communal. My parents, both still alive, are in their mid-seventies. I lived with them for eighteen years. I speak to them weekly on the phone. We get together several times a year but live 300 miles apart. I think about them daily, as they think about me daily; but I have not been part of their day-to-day lives for most of their lives. To hold the pieces of a life together—that is, to re-member—calls upon the unique, albeit connected, memories of sibling, spouse, children, colleagues, friends…

…And while this can be done after they have been buried or cremated, that life is as a consequence brought to committal unremembered, not a whole but pieces in a box; un-thanked-for; which strikes me as incredibly, unbearably, sad. Alternatively, you end up doing it twice; and while we actually remember, reconfigure, the pieces of a life over and over again, to do so in such a formal manner in such a short space of time is more to churn up ashes and dust than to enable the living or the dead to rest in peace and rise in glory.

To commend someone to God is also communal, the work of the people. Regardless of our own personal beliefs, we all renegotiate our relationship with those we have loved who have died. This is a universal human experience, expressed in many ways. It is perfectly normal and healthy to have conversations with the dead, whether we believe them to be in heaven or watching over us in spirit form or recycled atoms; and, often, to have a sense that they are listening to us and even speaking to us, nudging us to the right conclusion when we have a decision to make. And, regardless of our religious beliefs, we have a need to trust that they are at peace. But in our most raw moments, we need the support of others. At a funeral, there is an important sense in which the next-of-kin are at the centre of a community renegotiating their relationship with the deceased; and a secondary sense in which we are all at our own centre, renegotiating our relationship with others we have lost, and with our own mortality. The funeral service gives space and form to this, and where we cannot fully and confidently subscribe to the form, we submit to allowing others to support us, rather than succumb to a super-abundance of thoughts and feelings.

To commit a corpse to the cold earth or a furnace is certainly too much to bear alone. The closing of the curtain is hard (choosing to leave it open is even harder, in the long-run). In the Bible, God is given voice saying, ‘When you pass through the flames you shall not be burned, for I am with you’. In the face of a universal experience, we tap-into a common hope in our moments of personal hopelessness.

Last but by no means least, we comfort one another in our grief. This is going on in the funeral service, though, of course, it is not confined to the service but carries on into the wake. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’. Comfort is the promise; but acknowledging our grief and having it acknowledged is the prerequisite. Private committals separated (not only in location, and for pragmatic reasons, but more significantly) in form from public services of thanksgiving do not allow for the grief of all but the most intimate next-of-kin.

All these things are at play in the funeral service, in a way that a service of thanksgiving does not fully accomplish. Not that the work is completed by a funeral, but that it is begun, and signposts provided for the way ahead. As we renegotiate our relationship with the deceased, who remains very much part of our lives, we all need those signposts. I am already regularly hearing people lament the loss of the funeral. Funerals are on the endangered list. Were they to become extinct, we would live in a greatly impoverished world.