Pratchett,
Chesterton and Our Loved and Lost Pratchett,
Chesterton and Our Loved and Lost Pratchett,
Chesterton and Our Loved and Lost

Pratchett, Chesterton and Our Loved and Lost

Last Sunday was Remembrance Sunday.  On Tuesday this week, Mr Whitehead graciously came into school to sound The Last Post for us, a poignant reminder to meditate on and pray for those who died that we might live, followed by a beautifully reverent two minutes’ silence.  Will’s annual summons to gratitude paved the way for an exquisitely crafted Celebration of the Word in our 2 pm weekly Saint Mary and Saint Peter’s slot.  There, Mr Mitchell (David!), Head of History, generously shared with us an intimate part of a family’s history.  Dave gave moving testimony of how a reticent ex-soldier’s experiences of D-Day and its aftermath were shared with a little boy decades later and deflected the needle on the compass of that boy’s journey through life. At the very end, we discovered that the soldier was Dave’s grandfather and the little boy Dave, very firmly nudged towards the vocation of a history teacher by Grandad’s reluctant storytelling!  William and David both left me thinking afterwards of a line from Saint Paul, often used at the funerals: “The life and death of each of us has its influence on others.” (Romans 14:7) The names of those we have loved and lost, those who have left their influence on us in the Beaulieu community, are in a box at the front of the chapel this month, commended to God in Mass each day.

November is a time of year when we remember (and, in some Christian and other faith traditions, pray for) the fallen of the wars and all those we have lost.  At the beginning of that same month (the last day of October to be more precise), children and the young at heart go around dressed as monsters, vampires and mummies, trick or treating on Halloween - the E’en (Eve or Vigil) of All Hallows or All Saints on 1st November. At this time of year in the northern hemisphere of the planet, as the clocks go back and the dark nights and dank weather draw in, we find it somehow appropriate to reflect on our mortality. Christians do this not to scare themselves or be morbid, but to face the truth, the bottom line about who we are and where we are heading and consequently return to our daily lives perhaps more prepared to live them as we should have been living them all along.

“One day we will die…but we’re not dead yet!”  People often think that is a line from the atheist Terry Pratchett - because it is! It originated, however, in G.K. Chesterton, a Catholic often read by Pratchett.  Indeed, Pratchett dedicated his co-authored book Good Omens to GKC: “To G. K. Chesterton. A man who knew what was going on.”  The two truths contained in that Chesterton/Pratchett line must always be held in tension and kept before us at all times - one day we will die, but we ain’t dead yet!  We still have a lot of living to do! Any attempt to forget that this world is not the bottom line is unwise and doomed to failure because we’re going to die, sooner or later, and no achievements in life - no amount of money, pleasure, honour or glory - can cancel that bottom-line fact. What is also unwise is forgetting that we prepare for death by living fully here and now.  Life is a gift from God to be shared with others in love. “In the evening of our life, we will be examined on love,” Saint John of the Cross reminds us.

Reflecting on our mortality (not too much, but just a tad) every so often might be a good thing in a culture uncomfortable with discussions about mortality.  This uneasiness can be seen everywhere in the Western world. One example - and one that’s not perhaps so obvious here in Jersey but is a lot more obvious on the UK mainland - is that whereas we used to put our churches in the middle of our towns and our graveyards right next to them, now we bury our dead in enormous graveyards or cremate them in remote places, far from the centre of our lives. Another example is the effort we put into eliminating signs of ageing from our bodies - dying our hair or (if we have a few more quid in our bank account) turning to more sophisticated methods like Botox or plastic surgery. By the way, I am not suggesting for a minute that just because we might use a bit of hair-dye, make-up or botox (or in my case go to Blood Fitness and do 8 rounds on the bags to lose my beer belly), we are a death-denier!  There’s nothing wrong at all with trying to make the best of ourselves, the older we get!  I’m just saying that while we do that, we shouldn’t forget that ageing is an irreversible process!  As Mrs Lefevre said to me while I was putting this reflection together, “I’ve never met a 70-year-old with botox who convinced me she wasn’t 70!”  And for Christians, it’s how we look on the inside - the person we have forged from the raw material of our life - that will count in eternity.

I was speaking with my Mum on the phone on Wednesday night and we could hardly believe it was six years this coming April since my brother-in-law died with Covid. Those times were strange, weren’t they? Many did not go to work, were furloughed, lost jobs or were forced to take pay cuts. Some poor souls were left to die alone in hospitals and their families were not allowed to be with them to provide comfort or to mourn together (e.g. my sister and her husband).  I have sometimes wondered how many people’s priorities changed during this time. Did this weird period of history reveal to any of us that our way of looking at things was previously off beam? What lives had we been living previously? Were we really living? Are our priorities different now? Have we learned any lessons?  Or is it business as usual?  Life as previously?

Back then, you may recall that there was a lot of discussion about “essential” and “nonessential.” November is a month for focusing on the real essentials, an annual season to remember that what we usually consider as something very far from us - death - is potentially very close to us! A pandemic called Covid does not change whether we are going to die; it only changes when we might die. If death is decades away, it is not urgent. If it is potentially a fortnight away (or less in the case of my brother-in-law, once he got Covid), we ought to give it at least a second thought! Death is going to happen. In fact, if you have reached this point in my reflection, you are about 330-360 seconds nearer to your own death than when you started reading - which is why I’m going to end here and not waste any more of your precious time!

There’s a life to be lived and there’s love to be shared!  Ten years ago this week, I concelebrated the funeral Mass of my Irish Jesuit friend and mentor, Michael Paul Gallagher. He used to say, “Today might not have been and today will never come back again. Death makes life urgent for love.”  Or as Mère Saint Felix and our Sisters put it: our call in life is toute de charité and, while one day we will die, we ain’t dead yet!