Growing increasingly comfortable with thoughts of death has brought a corresponding increase in my consciousness of the fact that many people are far from attaining any form of comfort in such thought. There is an external presence that constantly tries to pull me away from the subject as though whispering into my ear that people do not want to hear me, or anyone else, dwelling upon it.
That is indeed understandable, and I have no active intention of dwelling on these things, and certainly no deliberate desire to contradict any request that I should steer away from them; but there is no valid reason for me to (in any way) avoid the subject.
I say that, not from the selfish point of view of believing that ‘this is my own blog and I shall write whatever I like’; ( when considered in isolation, that is a pointless attitude with little about it to convey that there is the wonder of a human mind behind it ), but because the source of suggestions that I should stop is external, and, having been subjected to due consideration, is duly regarded as being of little consequence. All whisperings from outside sources are completely overridden by the inner conviction that I should think and dwell upon those things into which my mind is drawn, those things about which I have a desire to think, and to understand, and to write. That which arises out of such thought is a part of my ongoing experience of overflowing, a brimming over which does not cease and which I believe to be an essential part of my continued growth towards becoming the person my Creator intended: the person He still intends me to be.
Just when I was ready to continue my journey with mind focussed on a different aspect of life, or of the journey itself, walking with Jesus and endeavouring to follow his lead, I have been brought back to further thoughts on loss and grief. Perhaps I am meant to continue my walk with Him in staying with these thoughts; it is not for me to decide the what, the where and the when, but simply to trust and to follow Him, obeying the prompting of the Holy Spirit whenever I feel that inner Presence.
From a natural human viewpoint, I still strain to the limit when trying to understand the death of a child, of whatever age.
In these days of increased longevity even an octogenarian can die while their parent still lives, and few indeed will think of the survivor as having lost a child; but to the living parent the death and the funeral are of none other but their own infant: perhaps someone who had helped and nursed them only to fail first, someone who had brought joy and parental pride in their own prime, who had gifted them with the blessings of grandchildren; someone who had matured into adulthood from an adolescence brimming with uncertainty, and into that adolescent confusion from a childhood of limitless wonder and ambition. The child born of the infant, and the infant born of newborn babe are themselves born of the parents, and that same wondrous life was borne for up to nine months within the womb.
And what of the still-born child? And of the child whose hidden development in its mother’s womb is never completed?
From conception to death a child is a life, is a gift, is a blessing; a child is for life, a child is life, a child is forever a child.
We are all somebody’s child, and regardless of the ups and downs, the losses and gains, the births and deaths, regardless of whether we know who are parents are or were, and however desperately cruel, unfair, miserable or deprived our start in life may have been, or still is, we have an un-severable spiritual lifeline that nourishes us as children of God.
Our umbilical chord was severed at birth when it had completed its task and was no longer needed, but while our physical growth was then able to continue with only external influence, our spiritual growth continues to need the power, security and loving input of a source beyond our comprehension, and which, if we will allow it, will nourish and build us until we reach a spiritual maturity: a transformed and liberated awareness beyond that sometimes fearful horizon we call death.
As we approach our own death we shall, for the last time, be poised in a deeply personal soliloquy at the very edge; and then, with awareness and thought no longer locked within ourselves but bursting into perpetual and total communication with others, into the living presence of Christ, an uttermost absorption of the Holy Spirit, and into the absolute and defining grasp of God, we shall be brought effortlessly into the bliss of infinity which is the ultimate reality of peace and love: a unity in which ‘edge’ is no longer even a word.
That is indeed understandable, and I have no active intention of dwelling on these things, and certainly no deliberate desire to contradict any request that I should steer away from them; but there is no valid reason for me to (in any way) avoid the subject.
I say that, not from the selfish point of view of believing that ‘this is my own blog and I shall write whatever I like’; ( when considered in isolation, that is a pointless attitude with little about it to convey that there is the wonder of a human mind behind it ), but because the source of suggestions that I should stop is external, and, having been subjected to due consideration, is duly regarded as being of little consequence. All whisperings from outside sources are completely overridden by the inner conviction that I should think and dwell upon those things into which my mind is drawn, those things about which I have a desire to think, and to understand, and to write. That which arises out of such thought is a part of my ongoing experience of overflowing, a brimming over which does not cease and which I believe to be an essential part of my continued growth towards becoming the person my Creator intended: the person He still intends me to be.
Just when I was ready to continue my journey with mind focussed on a different aspect of life, or of the journey itself, walking with Jesus and endeavouring to follow his lead, I have been brought back to further thoughts on loss and grief. Perhaps I am meant to continue my walk with Him in staying with these thoughts; it is not for me to decide the what, the where and the when, but simply to trust and to follow Him, obeying the prompting of the Holy Spirit whenever I feel that inner Presence.
From a natural human viewpoint, I still strain to the limit when trying to understand the death of a child, of whatever age.
In these days of increased longevity even an octogenarian can die while their parent still lives, and few indeed will think of the survivor as having lost a child; but to the living parent the death and the funeral are of none other but their own infant: perhaps someone who had helped and nursed them only to fail first, someone who had brought joy and parental pride in their own prime, who had gifted them with the blessings of grandchildren; someone who had matured into adulthood from an adolescence brimming with uncertainty, and into that adolescent confusion from a childhood of limitless wonder and ambition. The child born of the infant, and the infant born of newborn babe are themselves born of the parents, and that same wondrous life was borne for up to nine months within the womb.
And what of the still-born child? And of the child whose hidden development in its mother’s womb is never completed?
From conception to death a child is a life, is a gift, is a blessing; a child is for life, a child is life, a child is forever a child.
We are all somebody’s child, and regardless of the ups and downs, the losses and gains, the births and deaths, regardless of whether we know who are parents are or were, and however desperately cruel, unfair, miserable or deprived our start in life may have been, or still is, we have an un-severable spiritual lifeline that nourishes us as children of God.
Our umbilical chord was severed at birth when it had completed its task and was no longer needed, but while our physical growth was then able to continue with only external influence, our spiritual growth continues to need the power, security and loving input of a source beyond our comprehension, and which, if we will allow it, will nourish and build us until we reach a spiritual maturity: a transformed and liberated awareness beyond that sometimes fearful horizon we call death.
As we approach our own death we shall, for the last time, be poised in a deeply personal soliloquy at the very edge; and then, with awareness and thought no longer locked within ourselves but bursting into perpetual and total communication with others, into the living presence of Christ, an uttermost absorption of the Holy Spirit, and into the absolute and defining grasp of God, we shall be brought effortlessly into the bliss of infinity which is the ultimate reality of peace and love: a unity in which ‘edge’ is no longer even a word.
‘Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake,
the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know.’
(Mark 4:27)
