Prologue.

See also Thoughts on Death

In Middle ages people were constantly prompted to think of death,
to prepare, in this life, for the time, that they would die.
Today we spend a lot of time NOT thinking about death.
Modern medicine makes death an enemy to be resisted to the bitter end.
We think of healthy living, whilst they thought of healthy dying,
of which repentance and confessing your sins was the key part.

Death approaches us stealthily, as we witness our own slow decline.
Our self-image is hurt by the damage to our material being, our looks.
We spend, personal; and corporate, fortunes to delay death. or rectify the ravages of time.
Yet such vanities fade as age progressively dims our facilities.
Black humour is, perhaps, the optimum consolation,
but the anguish is inevitable.

Perhaps the regret of not being after death
is as silly as the regret that we were not there before birth,
but, in dying, we face that final separation from those we have grown to love.
It is so much more difficult to surrender the prospect of the future;
not to see grandchildren grow and make their way through life,
and we won't be there to assuage their sorrow over our demise.

In death there is sorrow at what will be taken from us
but we can can be grateful for what we had and were.

"Old age should burn and rave at the closing of the day"

People fight hard against their own death, often to the frustrationof their relatives.
But it gets us all in the end,
despite all the marvels of modern medecine,
which can keep us alive long after the joy of life has gone.
This distortion of natures ways has profoundly distorted the balance of society,
which is now heavily biassed towards a more age-oriented view of life;
perhaps less risk-capable, less energised, more 'conservative'.

Old age can be bitter if experienced as a grim battle to keep it at bay.
The old can become resentful at the lack of what they use to be able to do,
and the failure of the medical profession to halt ther steady decline.
The truth is that death has rung their bell, and peace comes only
when they open the door and say "come in".

An symptom of age is the resentment of the old at the young, for being young.
This is a form of envy. It has an ugly face and is a dangerous disease to catch.
One of the saddest moments is when we realise the we are no longer at home in the world.
We no longer understand how it operates, or why. We are strangers in our own land.
It is nothing new. It has been a feature of old age as far back as records exist.
As Isaac Watts wrote:
"Time like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away.
They fly forgotten as a dream, dies at the opening day.
Being a member of a Christian congregation is to watch chairs emptying as death passes by.

The best way to see religion is as humanities response to the puzzle of its own existence.
It is thought to be only humans, with our better brains, that struggle in this way.
Some few claim to have encountered something beyond material existence,
others must rely on "faith" - perhaps trust in an uncertain reality.

Religions market, as facts, things that are, truthfully, propositions.
Yet, though still rooted in the ideas of an eternal world, they can carry eternal values
which are valuable to those who have no interest in their supernatural claims.
However this purpose is now threatened by those fixated on set concepts;
on denial of any uncertainty in the propositions that they proclaim
and exclusion of those with a more realistic conception.

Many find this assetive tone hard to bear - and have thus abandonned their churches.
The younger leaders have learnt that certainty sells and conviction satisfies,
but this has excluded those with a wiser head and a wider spirituality.
Older churches have become a monument to loss of true Christianity.

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Faith leaders tell us that moral decay has followed the decline of religion. That is untrue.
The Church has been a bastion of unethical attitudes almost since its foundation.
Acceptance of social and moral change is essential to realistic religion,
but Revealed Religions find this hard to cope with.
They are persuaded that their faith is a mountain not a river.
They find it difficult to stay afloat in the rushing river of time
and the myth of the perfect past is always an attraction
to those who who have lost their mooorings.

Chapter 3. Looking Back in Love or Anger .

Most of us were brought up to believe that we made our own destiny.
This principle is foundational to the way that society is ordered.
We punish those who take the path that conflicts with our rules and opinions.
We even punish ourselves, with guilt trips, when we know that we have gone astray.
Such feelings of guilt or shame can darken our final years.
But were we ever, really, in chargeof our destiny?
are we not shaped by our environment,
conditioned to a certain course?

We can only understand the pattern and motivations of our life
when it is complete and we are no longer alive to undrstand it.
When we do look back, we may be dissatisfied with what we see,
but we need to remember that we never as free as we believed.
Our course was constrained by our condition and conditioning

St Peter's story of boastful support, betrayal and regret, mirrors the experience of many.
We are not what we pretend to be; would like to be; should be,
but our personal failures were the inevitable arising
of what, and where, we actually were, at the time.

This is an ancient idea, presented as Predestination by religions.
All that we can do is play out the hand that has been dealt to us,
and forgive our inevitable failures, as countless millions have done before.
For forgiveness is the one escape route from the prison of the past,
the single act that can open our eyes to our condition
and set us free from the steel rails of Predestination.

Chapter 4. Then What, at the very end?

Will there be any awareness that this is the final moment-
Some form of awareness before, even if none afterwards?
What is the last to go? Feeling? Emotion? Hearing? Sight?

Many, today, have had Near DeathExperiences (NDEs) - died and been brought back to life.
Commonly, they experience their "souls" hovering over their "dead" body.
They, and many others, see this as proof of an afterlife.
Sceptics see this as only an experience of the result of oxygen deprivation.
The mind is a strange territory which we have only just begun to explore.

Mankind appears to be the only form of existence that can anticipate its death.
Religions, in many forms, are our response to this unwelcome knowledge.
Religions thrive on our fear of non-being!

The most noticeable thing abut the dead is that they have stopped breathing.
Thus "breath" became associated with life. It was what made a body live.
When a body died where did it go - that place became seen as a spiritual world.
In the ancient world (as far back as 130,000 BC) gifts were laid with buried bodies
to equip them for this other existence, along with ceremonies to help them on their way.
wives were buried with their husbands as companions for his journey.

Marking where the dead lay was also seen as important, and still is today.
Graveyards can be seen as places inhabited (haunted) by the dead.
There are many tales of ghosts inhabiting the living world,
of Ouija boards, inexplainable events and haunted houses.

But, putting aside such tales, what happens to us after we die?
In Hinduism:
Your spirit moves on into another Being, be that human or other.
The form of your soul's new life depends on how you have lived in your life.
The purpose of existence is to escape the cycle of reincarnation
by living a good life and entering nirvana.
Nothingness is the objective.
Existence is a burden.

In Chrisianity and Islam:
Unlike the multiple chances of Hinduism, there is only one shot, one life,
and our eternal existence depends on our beliefs and behaviour in that alone.
(since we are each born into different circumstances, it does seem a very unfair concept!)
The Christian bible is reticent about the detail of Heaven and of Hell,
whilst Islam spells it out, even though it is a very male conception.
Original Christianity kept the dead in suspension until a Day of Judgement,
making the survival of a physical body a paramount concern.

We might ask whether Religion causes or just gives form to our obsession with death.
Without Religion would we still worry about a time of non-Being?
Is the concept of Hell merely a device to capture congregations?

Science is also bidding to conquer death, extending lifestyles eternally.
It sounds like a ghastly prospect,leading to overcrowding, starvation and so on.
I don't want to live forever - only, and always, to live for a bit longer.
Bodies, drained of life-forces, are frozen and suspended until Resurrection Day,
when they will be refilled and reheated to emerge into a future world.
Another approach merely extends life, almost indefinitely, through medical means.
Another is to extract the mind (and soul?) into a non-perishable container.
These processes are only for the rich. How will the poor respond?
What will be the fate of the reawakenwd in a future world?
What psychological, social and physical problems would arise?
Will a denial of death make life unbearable?

What is it that we fear in death? - the unknown?
Is desire for more of life, mere greed.
Can we not enjoy what we have, rather than lusting for more?
On our death bed, we should have courage to lay our burden down,
but overall be thankful for what we have had.

Chapter 5. DEFYING DEATH

(a Letter to the Bishop)

Changes in society inevitably impact those at the bottom of the tree.
Time moves on. Changes occur. We are but dust in its wake.
Yet the church sits solid, seemingly unmoving,
perhaps a bolster against the moving tide.

We value the detrius of the past;
the things that evoke memories of what we have been.
We mourn the things that have gone, as time steals away our youth.
Then it takes our middle years and those we love.
Finally it comes for us.

Religions defy the finality of death.
Yet for many the death of a loved one is when the clock stopped.
which is where, for moment, I could not go on!

Chapter 6. /a>

Chapter 7.