Commemorating the Dead
In “Is There Life after Death?” (1998), the theologican Jurgen Moltmann askes the question:
What is it in life that endures after death? We ask this question whenever we pause in life's journey and consider where we are bound. Where are the dead? We ask this question about the future of those who have gone ahead when, in the midst of our grief, we commit to the grave those whom we love, those who were the very joy of our lives. For when they die, our love for life dies as well.
Where are we going? Are we expecting anything? Is anything expecting us? What endures? Does anything endure? These questions seize us whenever we feel death's cold breath down our necks, whether it be our own demise or that of those we love. Life seems fleeting in those moments, and death final.
Tonight is the service for “All Souls” night, on the nearest Sunday to that festival, in which names of the dead are read out, and candles lit to remember them. I will be going, and I will be lighting cancles for:
Jo Parmeter
Annie Parmeter
Dave Romano
Howard Hadley
Jan Hadley
Times past seem so fleeting, and our lives are like those of mayflies, in our own way, fleeting, and lost. As Moltmann says:
But the question of death is not simply about the end of our lives. It is rather always already with us as the very question of time itself, because, as the Psalmist complained, our lives "are soon over and we vanish" (90: 10). We are simply unable to hold fast to any moment, even if we would say to those most joyous of times: "Stay a while, you are so beautiful." For the fact is that we ourselves are unable to 'stay a while.' The moment passes, and so do we.
Nothing seems to endure, for time is irreversible and nothing that is now passed can ever be made present again. The future, in which we hope and for which we work, will inevitably become our present, and our expectations will be followed by chastened experience. For each moment passes away, and what has passed will never return. Expectation gives way to experience, experience to memory, and memory finally to that great forgetting that we call 'death.'
All things pass, but we still remember, and both grieve and rejoice in the memories of those whom we have known, who are no longer with us. Sometimes that is an acquaintance, sometimes a friend, sometimes a relative of a friend, and sometimes even a lover.
Grief (as I know from personal experience) can be almost unbearable, and yet we do bear it, and as time goes on, we also remember the times of great happiness among friends, and among those we love. And of course we remember occasions, because of the emptiness, most strongly – Christmas, birthdays, and the day on which people died.
But it is also good to know that grief is a shared experience, part of the human condition, part of the cost of having affections and loves, part of what makes us human.
Rituals like that tonight remind us that we are not alone, and that while grief can be isolating, it also shapes who we are, just as did knowing those whose names are called out, those for whom we light a candle, and those whom we do not know, but are also remembered.
In “Is There Life after Death?” (1998), the theologican Jurgen Moltmann askes the question:
What is it in life that endures after death? We ask this question whenever we pause in life's journey and consider where we are bound. Where are the dead? We ask this question about the future of those who have gone ahead when, in the midst of our grief, we commit to the grave those whom we love, those who were the very joy of our lives. For when they die, our love for life dies as well.
Where are we going? Are we expecting anything? Is anything expecting us? What endures? Does anything endure? These questions seize us whenever we feel death's cold breath down our necks, whether it be our own demise or that of those we love. Life seems fleeting in those moments, and death final.
Tonight is the service for “All Souls” night, on the nearest Sunday to that festival, in which names of the dead are read out, and candles lit to remember them. I will be going, and I will be lighting cancles for:
Jo Parmeter
Annie Parmeter
Dave Romano
Howard Hadley
Jan Hadley
Times past seem so fleeting, and our lives are like those of mayflies, in our own way, fleeting, and lost. As Moltmann says:
But the question of death is not simply about the end of our lives. It is rather always already with us as the very question of time itself, because, as the Psalmist complained, our lives "are soon over and we vanish" (90: 10). We are simply unable to hold fast to any moment, even if we would say to those most joyous of times: "Stay a while, you are so beautiful." For the fact is that we ourselves are unable to 'stay a while.' The moment passes, and so do we.
Nothing seems to endure, for time is irreversible and nothing that is now passed can ever be made present again. The future, in which we hope and for which we work, will inevitably become our present, and our expectations will be followed by chastened experience. For each moment passes away, and what has passed will never return. Expectation gives way to experience, experience to memory, and memory finally to that great forgetting that we call 'death.'
All things pass, but we still remember, and both grieve and rejoice in the memories of those whom we have known, who are no longer with us. Sometimes that is an acquaintance, sometimes a friend, sometimes a relative of a friend, and sometimes even a lover.
Grief (as I know from personal experience) can be almost unbearable, and yet we do bear it, and as time goes on, we also remember the times of great happiness among friends, and among those we love. And of course we remember occasions, because of the emptiness, most strongly – Christmas, birthdays, and the day on which people died.
But it is also good to know that grief is a shared experience, part of the human condition, part of the cost of having affections and loves, part of what makes us human.
Rituals like that tonight remind us that we are not alone, and that while grief can be isolating, it also shapes who we are, just as did knowing those whose names are called out, those for whom we light a candle, and those whom we do not know, but are also remembered.
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