life and death – James Roose-Evans

Learning to live with doubt

I have been thinking of an imaginary epitaph for a stillborn child:

If I am so quickly done for –
What on earth was I begun for?

Even today, many women experience carrying a living child within them only to find it stillborn. If, as I believe, we each come into the world with a purpose, a life to be lived to the full, how do we explain this? And in the past, before the introduction of contraception, vast numbers of women would give birth to twelve or more children, many of whom were stillborn or who died at an early age. This is but one of many mysteries, and it is easy to become cynical and decide that life is ultimately meaningless. The Psalms express all this most vividly, being a record of the long years spent by the Israelites in foreign countries and in the desert, journeying towards the Promised Land. Even in their darkest moments, they are able to say, ‘Yes, though I walk through the valley of shadow and of death, thy rod and thy staff comfort me.’ And so we persevere with our meditation practice in an act of faith.

Tristram

In the course of my long life there have been many people who have had a deep influence on me, and many from whom I have learned. One such was Tristram Beresford who farmed five thousand acres, and was agricultural correspondent for the Financial Times (for which he was awarded an OBE). What very few of his readers knew was that he was also a mystic; every morning before going to work he would spend three hours reading and meditating. Thinking how life is an ongoing journey, I recall the following remark of his:

The journey is from A-Z. I doubt if we get as far as Z in this lifetime; but it is a place from which we can look back and remember how it felt to be at the beginning of the journey. I conceive of Z as the ultimate state of perfect certainty – a complete absence of all doubt.

Journey’s end

Shakespeare wrote that “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting”. After death we shall not only meet again those we have loved and who have loved us, but we shall encounter a love greater than any we could imagine – the love of God.

Louder sing!

I’ve recently been pondering some lines by W.B. Yeats:

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress.

Right up to the end we must keep singing.

Letting go

I recall something I was once told by a physiotherapist who worked with the dying at a hospice in Hereford. She had observed that the people who had the easiest deaths were those who, throughout their lives, had learned to accept many smaller deaths, such as the death of a loved one, or an ambition, or the loss of some physical ability; whereas those who had fought against any kind of loss or change had the most difficult passing. Right up to the end it is important to learn how to let go. Once again, through the simple practice of meditation we can learn how to be open to change and how to move on.

A personal reflection

Although these reflections will not appear until 2025, I am in fact writing them in February 2022. This is my 94^th year and I realise that I may not be here when they eventually come to be sent out … which prompts me to offer a reflection to those approaching old age. We are told to respect the elderly. This does not, however, mean we should be unduly subservient to them (to us I should say.) I am fortunate to have as a lodger a friend who, while keeping a watchful and caring eye on me, does not hesitate to challenge me occasionally. I try to be grateful for such feedback; but occasionally I am piqued! My ego has been pricked! But that is good, for one is still learning, right up to the end. As T.S. Eliot says in the Four Quartets: ‘Old men should be explorers still’.

Visitations

Someone once wrote to me asking if I believed in spiritualism:

I have been puzzled for seven years now about a vision I had twelve days after my husband died. I suddenly became aware that he was standing before me. He wasn’t a ghost but was quite solid, and he stayed there for two or three seconds. He was smiling the special smile he always kept for me. I wasn’t afraid – just amazed. So I leaned forward and spoke his name – and he’d gone! I felt much happier afterwards and thought he had come back to say he was alright and to say goodbye. I feel he is still nearby and keeping an eye on me. I can see him still after seven years.

I too have had a similar experience. Such visions are recognised as belonging to an entirely different order than that of the imagination, leaving a deep sense of contentment. And they are far more common than is often realised. My belief is that the dead are often allowed to visit us, sometimes in dreams, and to reassure us in this way, and then they are gone, to set about their own tasks, for the work of redeeming the cosmos is unending.

Not knowing

I want to quote the following from Thomas Merton which underlines what the last two blogs have been about:

Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, and I do not know the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself … but I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you … I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire … Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

The continuing journey

Many people believe that at death, when we shed our physical body, the spirit is then freed to travel on. In other words, the journey continues, but now into worlds of unimaginable beauty, wisdom and wonder. Although we have no scientific proof of this, deep down, for myself, at the level of intuition, I have no doubts that this is so, which is why I have no fear of dying. Once, years ago, some words came to me in a meditation – which I had calligraphed by John Rowlands Pritchard and which hang on a wall in my bedroom: ‘God is an endless journey.’

The Power of Now

The Power of Now is the title of a best-selling book by Eckhart Tolle: it has been read by millions. Another and earlier master of the art of life is Montaigne who urged his readers to withdraw to an inner room and respond to every moment. We should not dwell on our eventual demise but live fully and richly each instant of our lives. We must respond fully to each and every moment.