At Death Cafe with The Big Yin

I wonder if Inverness and the Highlands are ready for a ‘Death Café’?  The Death Café movement has inspired groups of people elsewhere - not primarily folk who are terminally ill, though they are welcome - to get together for a couple of hours, share coffee and cake, and talk about death and dying. 

Usually at Death Cafés, people share their feelings at the thought of dying, discuss what kind of funeral they’d like, how they’d like to be remembered, what happens when you die – anything those attending want to raise. There is no agenda, and definitely no preaching.

As a society, we’re reticent about discussing death. Do we fear that talk about dying makes us feel, and appear, vulnerable; or somehow bring death closer; or shatter our personal illusion that we will never die? I may acknowledge death in general, while denying the fact that I will die. We Christians may find it especially hard, in the light of other Christians’ apparent confidence, to admit what we’re really thinking.

At the Cafés, there may be as many views about what happens after death as there are people present. We die, and that is the end. We live on as incorporeal spirits. We are reincarnated. We are gifted with a new body, recognisably ours, yet different.

There were many ideas in Billy Connolly’s recent two-part documentary on death, The Big Send Off – a mixture of personal pieces to camera, interviews, and film of Connolly with people engaging in fascinating death-related customs.

I wondered what I’d say if I were in a Death Café with the Big Yin. I’d be listening carefully to see what I could learn from what was being said, how other views challenged mine. The discussion would turn to beliefs about what happens after death.

Billy Connolly says, as he did to camera ‘The conclusion I have come to is: I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea, but I’m completely open. There may be some grand plan but I have no idea what it is or whose plan it is.’

And I say something like ‘Billy, I’ve thought about this too, and I believe that the plan is God’s plan (although it’s a very flexible plan, inviting our co-operation.)  I believe God has self-revealed, giving us tantalising glimpses of God, the timeless Rock of Love in whom we are invited to trust.’

When someone else says (as one of Connolly’s interviewees did) ‘I believe in everything: that way I can’t be wrong.’ I’d say ‘Well I believe that in Jesus the Rock of Love came among us. There’s a strong case supporting the view that Jesus is unique. I am convinced that he died and resurrected, and that because of his death and resurrection he is the one-and-only life giver. In the face of death, I entrust myself to him.’

And when Billy Connolly says (as he did in the documentary to a Muslim man who told him that what counted was being a good person and doing everything right in life) ‘I think that’s what worries me most’. I’d say ‘Well, I think none of us matches that standard. But I’m convinced God forgives us if we seek forgiveness. Loved and forgiven we need not fear.’

You see I’d have to work hard not to preach! I wonder if some of us don’t want the Christian faith to be true, are so committed to it being false that we are in denial about the power of the Christian story and the evidence in its support.

Billy Connolly described those he’s sat with as they died. ‘Even people who were in pain some time before,’ he said, ‘when it came to the time of dying there was an acceptance, and they just slipped off.’ There is a time to stop raging against the dying of the light, a time to let a greater light embrace you.

But what of people who have not specifically placed their trust in Jesus? Those who have never heard of Jesus, or never encountered the real Jesus, as opposed to a caricature? I believe in the love of God and the sufficiency of what Jesus did in dying for the world. And I believe that beyond death when our lives are reviewed, if we have on balance chosen light and love over darkness and hatred, God will say ‘Welcome in the name of Jesus!’

Death Cafés exist to bring death into the open, so that those attending can live to the full. Churches invite us to take an unflinching look at ourselves and at death, and then realise that we are loved, accepted, forgiven, and that the life we will fully enter beyond death begins now. In fact churches at their best are Life Cafés.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 22nd May 2014.)