Winter Reflection for Home Office Vigil 2024

Creative Remembering -

The nights closing in, and the weather cooling. It's the dying of the year, and we think today not only of the dead but of life just before death

We think of those whose names we just read out, and apart from the tragedy of lives cut short, we are often shocked at what it must be like to live through those hours before their deaths, perhaps days, when their hopes die out.

We think of the controversial Assisted Dying Bill, nearer to our own lives, which claims that we have the right to shorten that pre-death period of suffering.

I spent a weekend this month with a cousin caring for an uncle and aunt aged over 100 and visited another cousin who is 103. All from one Scottish village! For my cousin, it's a merry-go-round of drives to the hospital or nursing home or housing with Assisted Living. The three centenarians have to adapt to losing their autonomy. The 103 year old protests a good deal. 'I want tae be back in ma ain hoose! Why don't they just give me a pill to end it all?' The fact is, she's too weak and infirm to look after herself and she hates it. We all hate the idea of losing control.

What is happening to those dying at sea or at borders, is that their agency, their control over their lives, is abruptly cut off while they are at the height of their lives, with families to support and careers to forge. They are dying either quickly or in agony, over weeks and months during a hard journey. They have handed over control perhaps long before their drowning or otherwise dying, reaching that point of powerlessness far too early, without a dignified time to prepare.

We simply can't accept this as inevitable. It is shocking. Yet it still goes on. How can I live my ordinary little life knowing that at this moment someone is drowning, lungs filling with water, unable to hold onto a child, a parent, a friend?

The answer seems to lie in the passage we have just heard. 'Do not be alarmed!' What? Not alarmed by all the gratuitous suffering? By the numbers of shipwrecks, not to mention the pushbacks and hostile policies? We remember the words of the hymn, 'Save us, for still the tempest raves, save lest we sink beneath the waves.' Yet here are people doing just that!

Jesus tells the disciples not to be frightened. 'And when you hear of wars, and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place but the end is not yet.' This is normal, he seems to say. He goes on, 'For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes and famines. These are but the beginning of the birthpains.' The war in Israel-Palestine, the war in Ukraine, these are not an exception to normal life, alas, this IS normal.

So we carry on, trying not to be alarmed, keeping faith with those of good will, those who were trying their best in life, and cut down. But what do we actually do? We work for peace, we carry out the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. And we remember.

We remember. Ours is a religion of remembering - that we are all caught up in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Do this in memory of me, we hear at the Eucharist. Those people dying are somehow, as we are, a part of a humanity that is dying but rising again. In a mysterious way, by actively remembering our unity, we and they have a foot in this world and the next.

And having faith in the next, the Kingdom, we RE-member, RE-create the kingdom, God uniting us in the process. In this RE - membering, our monthly mourning has a creative purpose.

So we have two symbols here, First, I invite you now to take a sprig of rosemary, the herb of remembrance, and place it in the vase, in memory of one of the people or groups we have mentioned today,

Second, we have daffodil bulbs, since that is the flower of hope and new life. So also take a daffodil bulb, to plant at home in the garden or in a pot, to remind you of that person. By next Spring you can still be thinking of this person or group and pray for their rest and hope for their families' futures. Memory is a powerful thing!

Next Vigils:

December 16 2024 12.30pm-1.30pm 2 Marsham St SW1

January 20 2025 12.30pm-1.30pm 2 Marsham St SW1