Dying To Live

In the last chapter ('Endless Adventure') of my just published commentary on the Community of Aidan and Hilda Way of Life, A Way of Life for the Third Millennium, I write: 'This adventure continues in our dying'.  Orthodox Christians speak of the transition from earth to heaven as 'The Great Passage'.

I have been holding rehearsals - rehearsals of words and music to repeat before and during my final transition.

I want to repeat the Seven  Last Words of Jesus on the Cross.

I want to repeat words that endless TV programmes that include funerals feature: 'I am the resurrection and the life' says Jesus, 'whoever believes in me, even though they die, shall live for ever...'

The theological advisor to The Community of Aidan and Hilda in UK, Rev. Prof. Ian Bradley, writes numerous books,  One of his latest is The Quiet Haven: An Anthology of Readings on Death and Heaven.

Although a Victorian English culture predominates, he does also include quotes from The Upanishad, Classical Greece, and  Adomnan's description of the death of Saint Columba.

He ends with Kahlil Gibran's 1923 Prophecy on Death 'Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing... And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance'.

Lastly, I want to listen to Faure's Requiem.  The link below records an augmented choir performing this in Berrwick Parish Church (which is hoping candidates to be our new vicar will apply).  I was privileged to preside at the said parts of this mass.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Faure%27s+requiem+link+holy+trinity+berwick+parish+church&