Life, Death, Religion and the Uses of Literacy
Nothing changes. Not really. Here I am, a grown man, heading towards retirement, having to apologize for handing my essay in late. Again. The sordid truth is inescapable. My pathetic little life is largely taken up, not with some titanic struggle between the forces of good and evil, but with a grubby little squabble between the forces of indolence and vanity. Whenever you surf in only to find the cupboard bare you can be smugly confident of the fact that my spirit is encased in the leaden suit of "why bother?" If you are reading this at all, it is because, for a moment at least, my desire to appear interesting and clever, not least to myself, has momentarily allowed me to escape the Jupiter-gravity of indifference.
We are strange creatures. (I'm assuming here that most people are pretty much like me, no more than a working hypothesis.) For all that we claim to love life, for all that we desire to live life to the full etc., we remain dull and inert and, what's worst, that is our preferred option. Self-satisfiedly unfullfilled we bumble through life in a rather non-specific way, contriving to chloroform our minds to the inevitability of our own demise. Occasionally, however, reality breaks through.
In November my sister-in law Ann died aged 75. She had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. She had outlived the original prognosis by an astonishing 18 months, but finally succumbed to complications following a bout of pleurisy. She had been extraordinarily courageous, as far as possible shielding her family from the implications of her own condition. Without question her religious faith was a source of strength at the end. There had been times when we had found her sentimental Catholicism rather cloying. I shamefacedly recall one occasion a few years ago when, my debating skills fuelled by an excessive intake of alcohol, I loudly demolished, as I thought it, the very fundament of her convictions. But faith is not mocked. One can't help thinking that the object of faith is really utterly secondary to the fact of faith itself. An innate sense that my life is not mine, but that I partake of a life infinitely greater than my confused and contradictory thinking can comprehend, is a jewel beyond price. In fact, Arnold Toynbee'in his "A Study of History" maintains that civilisation itself is ultimately dependent on a critical mass of individuals consciously acknowledging their subservience to greater reality.
The funeral was held at the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More in Cheyne Row, Chelsea. You could tell it was Chelsea by the the number of terrain-going vehicules on growth hormones parked in the street. Off-road capability is essential in some of the less well-maintained streets of the borough, apparently. Funerals are strange things. So many contradictory emotions are stirred up simultaneously: bewilderment at the irretrievable nature of death, sadness at the loss of a loved one, curiosity about the fellow mourners, anxiety about the protocol, the order of service, where exactly to sit, I'm I looking alright? am I posh enough for Chelsea? the unmitigated pleasure of family reunion, our judgement of the priest, the awkward smiling at people you might half recognize or don't know at all... At the back of the church I was thrilled to discover a Danish friend of Ann's with whom I was able to engage in what, for me, has become an increasing and therefore exciting rarity, a conversation in Danish. She was married to a Scotsman. What a coincidence! I too am of Dano-Scots pedigree! This trivial pleasure momentarily trumped any affectation of funereal solemnity...
The service itself was, mercifully, a dignified affair, without the crass soppiness which all too often informs these occasions. Ann's husband spoke a touching tribute in Ann's memory. Clive is an Arabic scholar. He has had a genuinely interesting career in the British Council, stationed in a series of Arab countries. Their favourite posting was the Yemen. Ann, a natural raconteuse, would tell the most hilarious stories of their adventures there. That for me will be my abiding memory of Ann. She was fun. Fun is a frequently underestimated quality, all too often misinterpreted as irresponsibility - by those who fear it most, of course, the pompous and the self-important. An inwardly trembling but outwardly very poised Carol read from the second letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, an awful, literal-minded thing about God judging your sins and deciding your final destination etc. You can't help thinking that Paul is at the root of a terrible misunderstanding about Christianity introduced right at the start. For me there is really only one sin: the blind, unreflected conviction of the self-sufficiency of our footling and confused personalities...
Death. A violent intrusion of real reality into the after-dinner snooze of our ordinary consciousness. The ritual of funeral both accentuates and distracts from that reality. While the solemnity of the occasion invites us to reflect on the nature of our own mortality, the familiarity of established ritual and the ordered process of ceremony contrive to absorb an appalling and baffling shock back into the pedestrian, workaday world in which we affect to enjoy a semblance of control. Dazed, uplifted, grieving, curious, dying for a drink, we tumbled out of the church and stumbled down to the crypt which had been conveniently remodelled as a reception area. Magnolia walls and green carpet failed to mask that special odeur of sexless sanctity and ecclesiastical mediocrity. All tucked unhesitatingly into the sandwiches and sausage rolls washed down with lashings of cheap red. I was cornered by K., an old friend of the family. A retired private doctor in his seventies, he has something of the mountebank about him, a sort of Leslie Phillips with a dubious licence to practice medicine. Sensing the naughty schoolboy in me, he proceeded to regale me with the stock repertoire of his raconteurship: spiffing wheezes and merry japes implicitly testifying to his debonair insouciance and irreducible class-consciousness. He was almost certainly the most entertaining conversationalist in the room, but I had finally to extricate myself in order to "mix". Invisible currents and eddies stranded me by the tea bar, where I got to talking to Carol's cousins, the Manchester O'Callaghans. Straightforward and Northern, with a dash of Irish Catholicism, the chat was easy. But some anomolous back-wash dragged me away and I found myself trapped in a side-pool, bumping and rebumping (metaphorically) up against a lump of a bore, a sexless square-shaped matron with a superior manner and an affected voice:
"How do you know Anne and Clive?" I inquired politely.
"We were out in the Yemen together."
"Gosh, how interesting! Anne and Clive loved it out there. Are you British Council then?"
"[Patronising nasal snorting] No, my husband was with the diplomatic service."
"Really? But you're back in England now I take it. I suppose it must be difficult to settle having spent the best part of your life abroad." I was manoeuvering to establish a bond of shared experience by playing the ex-pat card.
" Well, actually, we're very pleased to be back in London. Friends, cultural life, you know..."
"Oh, that's nice to hear. But isn't it difficult living in London? Where do you live in fact?"
"Westminster."¨
[££££££££££s!!!!]
"That's very convenient!"
"Yes it is."
"Still, don't you miss abroad? I've lived abroad nearly all my adult life. I think I'd find it hard to go back to England."
"No, but we've only recently returned from a posting to Vienna."
"How exciting! Such a contrast to the Yemen!"
"My husband was working for the UNXYZ. A tremendous responsibility."
"I can imagine. Still, Vienna is one of the great cultural capitals of the world." [Gushingly] "So many of my culture-heros are part of that great pre-war Viennese intellectual tradition...in fact I'm busy reading a collection of essays by Stefan Zweig. Good for my German! Ha ha, ha!" [Why, why, why, why, why!]
"Well, yes, but in a way the work of post-war writers is more culturally relevant. X for example. His plays are an excoriating criticism of the modern Austrian state. You are familiar with X's work?"
[Aghhhhhh!]
"Er, well, not as such..."
"I'm surprised. I don't think you can really claim to any understanding of Austria today without a thorough reading of X."
"I'm so grateful to you for putting me on to X. He'll obviously be my bedside reading for the next few months! Look, it's been great talking to you, but I'd better get back to my wife. Don't want her feeling neglected!"
[Aghhhhhh!]
And so we conclude: Death is inescapable, but we are too distracted and contradictory to come to any sort of understanding of what that implies. That religion, as practiced, just feeds into our inner confusion. That Art and Literature, however revolutionary in intent, are ultimately just chips in a game of social one-upmanship.
Kyrie Eleison.
We are strange creatures. (I'm assuming here that most people are pretty much like me, no more than a working hypothesis.) For all that we claim to love life, for all that we desire to live life to the full etc., we remain dull and inert and, what's worst, that is our preferred option. Self-satisfiedly unfullfilled we bumble through life in a rather non-specific way, contriving to chloroform our minds to the inevitability of our own demise. Occasionally, however, reality breaks through.
In November my sister-in law Ann died aged 75. She had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. She had outlived the original prognosis by an astonishing 18 months, but finally succumbed to complications following a bout of pleurisy. She had been extraordinarily courageous, as far as possible shielding her family from the implications of her own condition. Without question her religious faith was a source of strength at the end. There had been times when we had found her sentimental Catholicism rather cloying. I shamefacedly recall one occasion a few years ago when, my debating skills fuelled by an excessive intake of alcohol, I loudly demolished, as I thought it, the very fundament of her convictions. But faith is not mocked. One can't help thinking that the object of faith is really utterly secondary to the fact of faith itself. An innate sense that my life is not mine, but that I partake of a life infinitely greater than my confused and contradictory thinking can comprehend, is a jewel beyond price. In fact, Arnold Toynbee'in his "A Study of History" maintains that civilisation itself is ultimately dependent on a critical mass of individuals consciously acknowledging their subservience to greater reality.
The funeral was held at the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More in Cheyne Row, Chelsea. You could tell it was Chelsea by the the number of terrain-going vehicules on growth hormones parked in the street. Off-road capability is essential in some of the less well-maintained streets of the borough, apparently. Funerals are strange things. So many contradictory emotions are stirred up simultaneously: bewilderment at the irretrievable nature of death, sadness at the loss of a loved one, curiosity about the fellow mourners, anxiety about the protocol, the order of service, where exactly to sit, I'm I looking alright? am I posh enough for Chelsea? the unmitigated pleasure of family reunion, our judgement of the priest, the awkward smiling at people you might half recognize or don't know at all... At the back of the church I was thrilled to discover a Danish friend of Ann's with whom I was able to engage in what, for me, has become an increasing and therefore exciting rarity, a conversation in Danish. She was married to a Scotsman. What a coincidence! I too am of Dano-Scots pedigree! This trivial pleasure momentarily trumped any affectation of funereal solemnity...
The service itself was, mercifully, a dignified affair, without the crass soppiness which all too often informs these occasions. Ann's husband spoke a touching tribute in Ann's memory. Clive is an Arabic scholar. He has had a genuinely interesting career in the British Council, stationed in a series of Arab countries. Their favourite posting was the Yemen. Ann, a natural raconteuse, would tell the most hilarious stories of their adventures there. That for me will be my abiding memory of Ann. She was fun. Fun is a frequently underestimated quality, all too often misinterpreted as irresponsibility - by those who fear it most, of course, the pompous and the self-important. An inwardly trembling but outwardly very poised Carol read from the second letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, an awful, literal-minded thing about God judging your sins and deciding your final destination etc. You can't help thinking that Paul is at the root of a terrible misunderstanding about Christianity introduced right at the start. For me there is really only one sin: the blind, unreflected conviction of the self-sufficiency of our footling and confused personalities...
Death. A violent intrusion of real reality into the after-dinner snooze of our ordinary consciousness. The ritual of funeral both accentuates and distracts from that reality. While the solemnity of the occasion invites us to reflect on the nature of our own mortality, the familiarity of established ritual and the ordered process of ceremony contrive to absorb an appalling and baffling shock back into the pedestrian, workaday world in which we affect to enjoy a semblance of control. Dazed, uplifted, grieving, curious, dying for a drink, we tumbled out of the church and stumbled down to the crypt which had been conveniently remodelled as a reception area. Magnolia walls and green carpet failed to mask that special odeur of sexless sanctity and ecclesiastical mediocrity. All tucked unhesitatingly into the sandwiches and sausage rolls washed down with lashings of cheap red. I was cornered by K., an old friend of the family. A retired private doctor in his seventies, he has something of the mountebank about him, a sort of Leslie Phillips with a dubious licence to practice medicine. Sensing the naughty schoolboy in me, he proceeded to regale me with the stock repertoire of his raconteurship: spiffing wheezes and merry japes implicitly testifying to his debonair insouciance and irreducible class-consciousness. He was almost certainly the most entertaining conversationalist in the room, but I had finally to extricate myself in order to "mix". Invisible currents and eddies stranded me by the tea bar, where I got to talking to Carol's cousins, the Manchester O'Callaghans. Straightforward and Northern, with a dash of Irish Catholicism, the chat was easy. But some anomolous back-wash dragged me away and I found myself trapped in a side-pool, bumping and rebumping (metaphorically) up against a lump of a bore, a sexless square-shaped matron with a superior manner and an affected voice:
"How do you know Anne and Clive?" I inquired politely.
"We were out in the Yemen together."
"Gosh, how interesting! Anne and Clive loved it out there. Are you British Council then?"
"[Patronising nasal snorting] No, my husband was with the diplomatic service."
"Really? But you're back in England now I take it. I suppose it must be difficult to settle having spent the best part of your life abroad." I was manoeuvering to establish a bond of shared experience by playing the ex-pat card.
" Well, actually, we're very pleased to be back in London. Friends, cultural life, you know..."
"Oh, that's nice to hear. But isn't it difficult living in London? Where do you live in fact?"
"Westminster."¨
[££££££££££s!!!!]
"That's very convenient!"
"Yes it is."
"Still, don't you miss abroad? I've lived abroad nearly all my adult life. I think I'd find it hard to go back to England."
"No, but we've only recently returned from a posting to Vienna."
"How exciting! Such a contrast to the Yemen!"
"My husband was working for the UNXYZ. A tremendous responsibility."
"I can imagine. Still, Vienna is one of the great cultural capitals of the world." [Gushingly] "So many of my culture-heros are part of that great pre-war Viennese intellectual tradition...in fact I'm busy reading a collection of essays by Stefan Zweig. Good for my German! Ha ha, ha!" [Why, why, why, why, why!]
"Well, yes, but in a way the work of post-war writers is more culturally relevant. X for example. His plays are an excoriating criticism of the modern Austrian state. You are familiar with X's work?"
[Aghhhhhh!]
"Er, well, not as such..."
"I'm surprised. I don't think you can really claim to any understanding of Austria today without a thorough reading of X."
"I'm so grateful to you for putting me on to X. He'll obviously be my bedside reading for the next few months! Look, it's been great talking to you, but I'd better get back to my wife. Don't want her feeling neglected!"
[Aghhhhhh!]
And so we conclude: Death is inescapable, but we are too distracted and contradictory to come to any sort of understanding of what that implies. That religion, as practiced, just feeds into our inner confusion. That Art and Literature, however revolutionary in intent, are ultimately just chips in a game of social one-upmanship.
Kyrie Eleison.
posted by asbo at 10:54 AM
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