These thoughts on mortality were written down in response to an elderly woman of 97 who wanted to know what I thought about death and what comes after.  Although brought up as a Christian, this woman regards herself as an agnostic.  I have thus tried to present a view of death that is open to the needs of people who have not followed a Christian journey but perhaps can be encouraged to think and meditate about the topic as it grows closer to us.

 I decided to write down some reflections on the topic of mortality.  At the age of 80, I come firmly into the stage of life where it is natural to reflect and think about it. My reflections and what I think about death may possibly be helpful to anyone who, like me, is getting older.

‘All things come to an end’

My observations about death and mortality come under three headings.  The first is a pragmatic one.  This observation about death is to note that it applies to everything.  ‘All things come to an end’ as the Psalmist says.   When we think about this, we see that the limited life cycle of created things is not a statement of futility.  The existence of beauty and transcending glory in the created universe suggests something full of hope.  The things that come to an end, and these include our human existence, are also things that carry with them, in many cases, an enormous beauty that takes our breath away.  This beauty and glory that are found in many earthly things, including ourselves, coexist alongside their finitude.  ‘Coming to an end’ and ceasing to exist in a material sense is a necessary part of the pattern of existence.  This beauty and glory that is part of our human existence and the created world is something we are invited to celebrate throughout our lives. We are part of a world that reveals so many sources of wonder and glory, but all this comes with the cost of being in a world that is material and finite.  We pay this price of being subject to death because we recognise that choosing to avoid it would necessitate avoiding life altogether.  Not existing, never being born, is not a choice that most of us would make, even if it were possible.  Many lives are lived with terrible obstacles and handicaps, but every individual experiencing some level of conscious awareness can experience wonder and glimpse transcendence.  Using these words does not necessarily imply a religious perspective on existence, but everyone, regardless of their belief system or lack of it, can know something of human wonder. Life is a precious gift and, given a choice between existing or not existing, most of us would choose to experience it, while recognising that it comes, for many, linked to a package of painful experiences to endure.

Intimations of eternity. 

The next observation I make is that there is, in our human life and experience, intimations of something else.  For the non-religious person, I would want to speak about the almost universal experience of love.  Love is not just something that belongs to each of us in our individual family or friendship circles.  It is a universal, and, for human beings, it is even built into the survival mechanisms we have.  Without it we die, especially at the stage of being infants.  It is not hard to imagine love as a universal principle pervading the entire universe.  Another image is that of love being like engine oil which allows the vast mechanisms of life, in all its forms, to function. We live in a universe which has these two universal principles.  One is the constant emergence of life in many forms, animal and vegetable.  We can think of love in the same way.  It is an energy that, like life, is constantly manifesting itself.  Life and love are not material things, but they are transcendent entities or principles in which we as human beings participate, indeed owe our very existence to.  Is it going too far to say that life and love are the secular realities that religious people would describe as being like what they describe as God?   If life and love exist this side of death (not a religious insight), it is not too hard to imagine that they are universal in some way and survive our individual demise.  To die is to enter a dimension where life and love are experienced as all-pervading and all-encompassing.

The part that is played by religious faith.

The religious quest allows us and encourages us to do two things.  One is to live life always exploring these universal realities of eternal life and love.  The Christian way was to point to the utter supremacy of following in the path of life and love, seeing Jesus as its perfect embodiment.  The pagan world before Christ knew only power, cruelty and human exploitation in society.  There were those who questioned these dominant ways of living life, but they were few.  It took the Christian revolution (not always well understood) to bring this ground of hope into human consciousness.  The hope says that human beings have been allowed a glimpse of what is and is to come and we must at a deep level orient ourselves to this reality.  Meditation or prayer are different names for the activity of aligning ourselves to what ultimately is.

The experience of death

The moment of death is the moment when we cross over from a world full of incredible richness and beauty to another world possessing these things but in a completely different way.  Human existence has been a learning experience, an opportunity to recognise the important transcendent universals which never come to an end (life and love).  Somehow, I believe that whatever awaits us in the place beyond, we will be encouraged to continue to orient ourselves to these same realities. For Christians the journey is a continuation of one of identification and participation in a man who is himself a kind of bridge between two realities.  The words that resonate from John’s gospel are ‘where I am, there you shall be also.’  They hint that while there may be many ways of arriving and reaching this fuller world, holding on to (faith) Jesus is a reliable route.  The important thing for all of us is to have lived this life at depth so that we will recognise the new stage.  This will only be obvious to us if our lives have already let in the possibility of wider love.  Living our lives now with the fullest openness to this love is what we have been rehearsing for all of our human lives.