This reading, following Hallowe'en, continues to hold our understanding of life and death together. However it may be in heaven, death shatters our interconnectedness here. If death propels us anywhere, to human understanding that place is a void, and dark.
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John Donne’s ‘No man is an island’ (1624) is captured in music and language of a different era by the American singer and songwriter Jackson Browne in his song ‘For A Dancer’ (1974). The lyrics express the interconnectedness and as well as the separatedness which define modern life and death. In hinting at the possibility, but likely unreachability, of meaning they also speak of our times.
There is nothing about our times which makes them wise times, right times. By grace we may face the beyond and say, with St Paul and without pretence:
(Romans 8: 38-39; 1 Corinthians 15: 19)
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord … If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But Christians are not called to be islands; the images Jesus used were light and salt. Even if we have that kind of faith which does not know doubt, we all love and grieve for many people whose understanding of life and death is much closer to Jackson Browne’s slightly confused, slightly contradictory song than to St Paul’s. And that faith is also faith which, while not overcome by doubt, finds that doubt and pain have moved in with suitcases. That is the faith of the final prayer in this section.
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FOR A DANCER
Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don’t remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you’d always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you’re nowhere to be found
I don’t know what happens when people die
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening
And I can’t help feeling stupid standing ‘round
Crying as they ease you down
‘Cause I know that you’d rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away
No matter what fate chooses to play
There’s nothing you can do about it anyway
Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours
Another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone
Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
The world keeps turning around and around
Go on and make a joyful sound
Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But you’ll never know
Jackson Browne
A PRAYER OF BEREAVEMENT
Almighty God
You have spun our lives like gossamer between the stars
Each strand held in your hands.
You show us that you love us
And tell us death is not the end.
But this morning
The mirror looked at my cracked face
And the cold sink winced under my raging hands
Until the plughole confessed
That my life had been poured away yesterday.
So I shan’t do astral gossamer today, if that’s all right with you.
Don’t paint Death’s face in too friendly a light
Or I might start wondering about the two of you.
But for your help
In Jesus’ name I ask.
Just a second