Leaving spaces for the light

Kate Gross died at 6.29am on Christmas Day 2014, ten minutes before her young twin boys woke and asked if it was time to open their presents. Some weeks earlier, quoting a poem by Raymond Carver, she had expressed gratitude that she was able ‘To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.’

Shortly before her death the 36-year-old former civil servant and CEO of the Africa Governance Initiative, had completed a wonderful book, Late fragments.

Kate Gross and her family

This isn’t a typical ‘cancer memoir’ but a brilliantly-written, self-aware, insightful review of her life and priorities in the light of imminent death.

We learn about her childhood, her teenage voyage of self-discovery, her career, her capacity to give and to cherish friendship, and about the deep, robust love she and her husband Billy shared.

She doesn’t conceal the exhausting pain and struggle of the roller-coaster journey as the medics battle her cancer with surgery and chemotherapy; she knows she is fortunate in the level of care she receives, and in being fundamentally ‘wired for happiness;’   but she is also real about the unexpected blessings the illness brings.

Having confronted the inevitability of her death, she found that at times she ‘experienced joy – perhaps even the sublime – in an unexpected and new way.’ She writes: ‘I am happy. I am really, truly happy.’

She assures us that there is wonder in the everyday if only we can see it. ‘Your daily bread,’ she tells us (and by this she means family meals and hugs and sunsets), ‘Your daily bread is my greatest pleasure.’

Kate Gross learned that that in her earlier, driven busyness she had neglected her inner self. Cancer gave her space to rediscover her true identity: ‘Finally, I knew who I was inside – I was one with me.’ What matters, she tells us, is how we choose to be, not what we choose to do. She encourages us to reach out in compassion to others. The fact that we have these fragile ties of compassion for our fellow human beings is ‘a reason for unconquerable gladness.’

At one point the words she has written in describing her illness make her feel desolate. But then she realises that this is because, unlike in real life, ‘I haven’t left space between my sentences to let the light in.’ Powerful stuff: may we, in all our living, take care to leave spaces for the light to reach us.

Late fragments is an outstanding book, full of wisdom. Kate Gross quotes Christian writers, and has (as she puts it) ‘godly’ friends, but she is not a Christian. If there is a God, he is no more in control than we are, she says. And of heaven, she says that this life is so very good, that she can’t believe that ‘anything, anywhere else could be better than what we have right here, right now.’

Her story prompts a comment and a question from Christians. The comment is this: we simply cannot say that because people don’t acknowledge the reality of God they will inevitably sense in their lives ‘a God-shaped gap.’ For this woman, agnostic when it comes to God, speaks of her almost miraculous discovery of joy and wholeness in the shadow of her dying.

The question is a serious and challenging one. Kate Gross had no clarity about God’s existence, and made no confession of Christ as Lord. In the light of our Christian understanding, what happened to this woman when her spirit was released from her body on Christmas morning last year?  Was she welcomed into the dimension beyond, or was the door closed to her?

In response to the comment and the question, I reflect on the bigness of God. The God who is present throughout the universe; present I believe in all true love and all true joy; present in all the promptings of our hearts towards goodness and truth. God is the light who shines through even when we don’t leave spaces.

It seems to me that as love, joy and compassion beckoned Kate Gross, God was in the beckoning, and when she welcomed the these gifts she unknowingly welcomed the Christ who is their true giver.

I believe that when Kate Gross died, she found herself in a place with all the glory and physicality of earth but an immeasurably better place, better not just in the absence of pain and suffering but in the presence of the Christ who is immeasurably more wonderful than our best wonderings.

But I also believe we can discover now something of the wonder of God behind the gifts, and  learn at a deeper level ‘to call myself beloved and know myself beloved on the earth.’

Late fragments is published by William Collins. ISBN 9780008103477

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 12th November 2015)

Praise and lament: a faith story

When 67-year-old rock start Wilko Johnson, former guitarist with Dr Feelgood was told in 2013 he’d pancreatic cancer and had just ten months to live, it transformed his thinking. The musician, who had always been prone to depression, spoke recently of his deeper appreciation of life in the light of the diagnosis. ‘You start to realise the things that really matter, your family and fundamental things.’

In time, the medics discovered his cancer was treatable, and Johnson survived. But once the prospect of death again receded into the impenetrable future, curiously the depression returned.

Another story, this time told by the preacher at church speaking about a psalm (prayer-poem) from the Bible with the theme ‘Praise the Lord!’ He spoke about watching a live recording of a comedy show, during which the floor manager silently displayed signs to the audience prompting their reactions: ‘Laughter’; ‘Applause’.

His point was that the phrase ‘Praise the Lord!’ in the psalm had the force of a command. ‘You will praise the Lord.’

I thought, OK, it’s good to praise God, recognising God’s greatness, wonder, generosity to us. But sometimes Christians come across as dictating how we should be feeling and reacting, as though Jesus were a Dr Feelgood. ‘You will rejoice. You will put your anxiety behind you. You will be full of hope.’ 

This could make me feel a failure as a Christian if I were sad and worrying and struggling:  as if Dr Feelgood was ignoring me, or his healing touch insufficient for the depths of my need.

The following Sunday’s sermon was on another Bible prayer-poem (Psalm 69). The writer pours out his sorrow to God. ‘I am worn out calling for help.’ It’s a sentiment with which many of us will be familiar. And it’s a challenge to us to make a bonfire of those ‘You will be…..’ prompt boards, and make church a safe place where people can express to friends and to God exactly what’s on their hearts.

But what about that call to ‘praise’ God in the previous week’s Psalm? Surely it’s hypocritical to praise God when we feel desolate and abandoned?

The preacher, lay reader Iain Todd told a compelling story of his own time in a dark place. In March 2014 he was taken ill after performing at an Eden Court charity event. Rushed to hospital, he was diagnosed with ‘a perfect storm of heart symptoms.’ Over the next few days he came close to death, and was revived by CPR. Eventually, Iain was put in an induced coma and had a pacemaker fitted. His slow recovery began.

Iain described the sense of peace and God’s presence which he and Fiona his wife felt during the days of crisis. One morning, desperately weak, he called out for help and as he waited for staff to come the words ‘Be still and know that I am God’ sat down in his mind’s front room.

A couple of weeks later, after he was back home the Bible reference Romans 8:18 came forcefully to mind. Neither he, nor Fiona knew what that verse said, but when they read it they saw words about viewing suffering in the context of God’s great plan for the future. These words came to Iain forcefully as words for him that day.

And at a check-up 12 weeks after his operation, doctors found that where there had been massive damage to his heart, now only minor heart wounds remained – a clear sign Iain believes, of divine intervention.  He gives huge thanks to Professor Leslie and his team in Cardiology at Raigmore Hospital for all their help.

The experience has shown Iain what is really important in life, and helped him order his priorities. ‘God is alive and working,’ he says ‘God answers prayer, though not necessarily in the way we expect.’

Iain was able in the pain and darkness to recognise God’s presence, to thank God and even to praise God. Our experiences are all different, but the God who was with Iain in his sorrow is with us in our sorrows.

God speaks to all of us at the times when our life is threatened and vulnerable. I believe God awakened Wilko Johnson to the preciousness and priorities of life following his diagnosis. In Iain’s case the journey he travelled with God in that hospital bed has changed him for ever.

The only prompt board God holds up reads encouragingly ‘Be real!’ It’s good to praise. But it’s vital to be real with God in our times of helplessness and sorrow, and on those desperate days when though we feel utterly abandoned by God our faith nevertheless edges Godwards.

And paradoxically we often find that the more real we are with God, the more real God becomes to us and that from our place of pain, despite ourselves almost, the words of praise well up in our hearts.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 25th June 2015)

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.)