Gordon Linney
Lindor Reynolds who died just two weeks ago was an award-winning Canadian columnist and campaigner. She had played a major role in securing better legal measures to protect children from would-be abusers using the internet.
In a farewell column she was candid about her reaction to the news that she was terminally ill. “It would be an understatement to say that a year ago, I got a kick in the teeth when I was diagnosed with brain cancer. My new mailing address is Riverview Health Centre, where I have come to die, although you’re not supposed to say that here . . . they promised I would never feel pain again, and they have been pretty true to that. When there is pain, there is a kind nurse with a needle and a machine to lift my sore, useless body into a wheelchair. I can no longer walk independently. I hate the loss of independence.” This doesn’t make for comfortable reading; we don’t like being reminded of our mortality.
Woody Allen famously quipped, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” It’s clever and funny and it strikes a chord because that is how many of us deal with death. We joke about it while keeping our real thoughts and fears to ourselves.
Attitudes to dying and death are influenced by social and medical developments. A century ago people were more familiar with the fact of death because the sick and elderly were often looked after and died at home with family, including children, close at hand. But improvements in life expectancy and medical advances have changed attitudes and raised expectations. Instead of accepting death as something natural it is seen as alien, even a failure on the part of the medical profession.
Language is adapted to suit. People pass away rather than die; undertakers are called morticians and coffins have become caskets. Sometimes there is even an expectation that funerals should be cheerful events where sad, broken hearts are left at the door of the church in a feeble gesture of denial. But denial does not work; the loss and the pain are real. And in the silence of our hearts we are left wondering is this the end of everything? Is there nothing left to hope for?
At the end of his life Albert Einstein, physicist and philosopher, wondered aloud: “Now I see that the only question is, is the universe friendly? I have begun to discover its physical meanings but the question that haunts me is, is it friendly?” That is a profoundly religious question.
The Christian answer is a resounding "Yes", as Bishop John Pritchard reminds us in his book Living Faithfully. He points out that Christians believe in resurrection, a new life, a "spiritual body" raised from the grave and that this belief is based on the conviction that the unique and unrepeatable event of the resurrection of Jesus "completely reversed the tragic narrative of crucifixion and replaced it with a narrative of irrepressible life". He goes further: "We believe that a God of love and justice will not let sorrow last. Our belief in the value of truth, justice, love, mercy, compassion and so on only makes sense in the context of absolutes of which our present experiences are but shadows."
In her last column Lindor Reynolds wrote: “My Christian faith has carried me through. It’s stronger than it ever was. My church family has been there for me. All around my room are things from them, both from the Anglican Church I attend now – Holy Trinity – and the one I used to attend, St Vital’s St Mary Magdalene.”
The faith that carried Lindor Reynolds through and the faith we proclaim in this season of All Saints and All Souls, insists that the compassion of God is overwhelming: “He shall wipe every tear from their eyes. Death and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” That’s our hope but more importantly it’s God’s promise.