Forever?

I’ve been intrigued a few times recently by hearing that something will ‘reduce the chance of death’. It’s an interesting phrase because, as far as I am aware, death is the one certainty in life. It may be possible to reduce the chance of an early death, but I don’t think you can avoid it altogether. Would you really want to?

I am not anticipating death any time soon, or indeed wanting it; but I can see a time when I may well feel that I have lived my life and am quite happy to die and go home to God. I don’t think I’m scared of death, although I appreciate it may be difficult to tell until it comes near. At the moment, my feelings tie in somewhat with Paul’s point in the letter to the FIND OUT WHICH LETTER: to live is Christ and to die is gain. A faith in a life beyond death, when we will go and be with the God we have loved and served and followed during our life, is to anticipate death in a totally different manner to that which might apply to those who have no belief in ‘anything’ beyond death. That is not my faith and I cannot speak for them.

That is not to say that, just because you are a Christian, you will have no fear of death. It is perfectly normal to fear that which you do not know, and we do not know death. A fear of death does not pass judgement on how much faith you have. Thinking about this in relation to my own life, I wonder how much being in a Religious Community has affected my thoughts on death. Living in a multi-generational Community means living with people who are older, some of whom may well be infirm, and death, while not necessarily a frequent occurrence, comes our way possibly more often than it would have done otherwise. It does also often take place in our buildings. CAH was never a large enough Community to have an infirmary, but, up until recently, most of our Sisters died in either All Hallows Hospital or Nursing Home; while not in the Covent building, still in a Community building. A building we know well. Moreover, the funeral has taken place in our Convent Chapel, and Sisters have been buried in our grounds; in what was our home. It brings death very close, and means that, to an extent, we are living with death. It is not something I can escape. I know – or knew – the shape of my funeral and the place where I would be buried. I know my funeral hymns (however often they might change). Moving away from Ditchingham has changed that to an extent, but what I learned from that experience has stayed with me. The time I have spent sitting with dying Sisters has been a peaceful and very prayerful experience. It does mean that, while I do not know what my own death will bring, I do know something of what dying involves. I know that, whether I am physically on my own or not, I am likely to be upheld by prayer and that God will be with me.

That latter thought is vitally important; we do not know what death may involve for us, or what it might bring to us. But we can know that we will not go through that experience on our own. God will be with us, holding us and loving us, and there to greet us at the end. Which may or may not be a comfortable experience, of course, involving, as it might, something of confronting who we are and how we have lived. Still – I am sure it will happen in the context of total love. A love which will enable us to leave behind all that is not truly of us, and go forward in the next stage of our journey with God. A thought that could be equally scary and/or exciting. It will bring a letting go; as, indeed, death does, whatever happens after. Sometimes there will have been a letting go of physical good health; there may well have been a letting go of control, as we need the help of others in our day to day lives. But death itself involves a letting go of all that we know and all whom we love in this life, at least in temporarily. It is a moving on. One which may or may not scare us, but one we cannot escape. A moving on that will bring us closer to God. A moving on that we can hide from, or avoid, or pretend will never happen; or a moving on that we can confront, accept, wrestle with, prepare for. A moving on with God.