Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth.
while the evil days come not,
nor the years draw nigh,
when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them;
while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars,
be not darkened, nor clouds return after rain;
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be
broken.
or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel be
broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was:
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and
keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be
good or whether it be evil.
Ecclesiastes 12
The book of Ecclesiastes is one of my favourites in the bible, because it adds just that right note of astringency to stop you thinking things are easy or simple. Life is dangerous and we should engage in it in the same spirit as our marriage vows: for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; and as the collect says, throughout all the changes and chances of this mortal life. Marriage is just one aspect of life of course, but it does illustrate so well the dangers of commitment.
I was reminded of this by the fact that the play Shadowlands came to Malvern recently. C S Lewis is probably best known these days as the author of the Narnia children’s books, but 50 years ago, when I was a student, he was best known for the popular books he wrote defending Christianity. He was a don at Oxford, a confirmed bachelor and a professor of English at Cambridge, but his life was much more interesting than this might suggest and one period in it was made into the play. It concerns Lewis’s friendship with an American lady, Joy Davidman, a fan of his whom he eventually married and fell in love with. In that order if I remember the biography correctly – and not entirely an uncommon sequence of events. Joy became terminally ill with cancer and the play is about how Lewis found that some of the answers he had provided before were no longer adequate. The play actually ends with Lewis saying these words:
“Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I’ve been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.”
That’s the deal. It’s just the way it is. You can’t have life without death and the greater your love in that life, the greater the pain of loss on death. Well, I don’t have any easy answers to that situation, any more than Lewis did, but what we try to do in this service is to come to terms with this pain we feel.
People react in differing ways to death. Some dwell on their loss and withdraw from society. And sometimes society withdraws from them. People are embarrassed to meet someone who has recently been bereaved, but they should not be. Death is a fact of life. It will happen to all of us and we will surely all lose someone we love sooner or later. Death leads on to new life and that can be understood in all sorts of ways, not least for the bereaved. We should help someone who is bereaved to get on with their new lives, not encourage them to become a recluse.
Sometimes, in trying to get back to normal life, people try and obliterate the memory of their loved one, but I think this is a mistake too. We shed our tears, but we can look back on a life with happiness too. These days, we say we give thanks for the life of someone who has died and there is much to be thankful for. The laughter, the happy times, but also the struggles and the difficulties overcome are all worth remembering and indeed enjoying. It is important to keep these memories alive and not allow them to be erased by the trivia of every day life. Memories do fade, particularly as we get older, so it is useful to have a permanent memorial to aid us.
Now this is one of the purposes of the memorials in our churchyard, but I have to say I don’t find them too helpful. And people often scatter ashes these days, leaving no memorial at all. It has the effect of encouraging people to forget the past and that must surely be wrong. Because of this, in our church we would like to try out an idea which I have called the virtual churchyard. The virtual churchyard is an area on our church web site where we can store pages commemorating those who have died. Instead of a simple inscription we can put photographs, recollections, stories and favourite poems, all of which are simply not possible for gravestones.
What we are proposing is to try out this idea on an experimental basis, so we are looking for some volunteers to write some commemorative pages. Obviously the preparation of a page to put on the web site is something we must do, but if you can provide us with the words and the pictures we will put them together for you. Now, we have to have some rules about what can go on, but we would hope to be much more relaxed about that than our diocesan chancellor might be. If you are interested in this idea, could you please put your name and telephone number on the list at the back of the church, so that I can get in touch and go through the idea with you in more detail. The Internet, and the World Wide Web, can be used in all sorts of ways ranging from the trivial to the sublime. Here is one use which I hope is much closer to the sublime than most.
Remembering the dead is something we should all do and I hope that someone some day will remember me. But not an obituary, for heavens sake! Something to capture the personality or maybe something just like a bunch of flowers to say this life was precious, a gift of God. Let me end with just such a poem, the epitaph which Lewis composed for his dead wife:
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.
We can all say, Amen to that.