Strange co-incidences

This is not so much ‘a wonder’ as ‘I wonder’. Perhaps someone reading this will be able to suggest an explanation.

Years ago my husband and I moved temporarily from Western Australia to a town in the north of England close to where I was born. At the time we’d been trying unsuccessfully to start a family for several years. I agreed to go reluctantly, as I felt that the stress of moving just made it less likely that I’d conceive. Soon after we arrived two things happened – I experienced a break-through in my spiritual life that had been eluding me for a long time, and I fell pregnant.

At the time I felt a strong sense that somehow both events were tied to my being where I was. It was as if I had to be back in that location to deal with something that was blocking my progress both spiritually and physically. Yet I had, and still have, no idea what that ‘something’ was. If there was ‘spiritual warfare’ going on, I wasn’t consciously aware of it. I certainly hadn’t gone there looking for answers.

The experience came back to me this week when I discovered that my grandfather was baptised in the same church that we attended every week for two years while we were living in England. My daughter was also baptised in the same church before we returned to Australia. Until now I had no idea that we had any family connections with that particular church, although I knew that my grandparents’ family had lived in another town not far away and went to church there.

By another strange co-incidence, my other daughter chose to move interstate to Adelaide to do her post-graduate studies. While she was there I discovered that three generations of my grandmother’s family had lived in Adelaide in the 19th century. Previously I was vaguely aware that my great grandmother had been born ‘somewhere in Australia’ while her father was stationed there as a soldier, but I knew nothing about her mother’s family being resident in Adelaide. I had always assumed that the soldier had his English wife with him when he was posted.

I’ve heard other people’s stories of choosing to visit a place for seemingly rational and mundane reasons and then finding that they had some strong, previously unknown, family connection to the place. My logical brain doesn’t know what to make of this, except to say, “well, it’s probably all co-incidence or based on sub-conscious knowledge”. My evangelical education doesn’t provide any theories about spiritual connections to place, and would probably be suspicious of such ideas. Other cultures have a much stronger sense of the importance of place.

My gut feeling is that we somehow do have ties to places that we are unaware of at a conscious level, and that can influence our choices. But I don’t know what to make of it. Any suggestions or comments would be welcome.

The ugliness of death has been defeated

(Monday musings)

Death is always ugly, no matter how or when it comes. As a young hospital doctor one of my tasks was to examine patients who had recently died in order to confirm their death. It was usually quite evident that the person was dead, even before I felt for a pulse and listened for breathing. Death robs the body of colour and personality and leaves it waxy and inert.

In the course of my work I saw bodies of people who had begun the day with no expectation of dying, and those who had longed for death. I saw young bodies and bodies wizened with age, shrivelled by cancer, bloated by disease. I saw corpses laid out neatly in hospital beds and corpses strapped hastily to ambulance stretchers. I never saw a beautiful corpse.

Death is always cruel. Sometimes people speak of death as if it were a friend, bringing relief from suffering. But death often only ends the suffering that the process of dying began. Death takes a warm, living being and leaves it with the cold, peaceful stillness of a stone or a block of wood. Then it initiates a new wave of suffering in those who grieve.

Death is always tragic. We usually think of the death of a child as the most tragic of events, since it robs the world and the individual of all the potential that a young life held. Yet I would say the longer a person has lived, the more tragic their death. In the passing of an elderly person is lost the knowledge, wisdom, memories and experience acquired over a lifetime, often at the cost of immense struggles and pain.

Even if the person has taught others and written books, only a fraction of their real life’s work remains behind when they go. The rest perishes with them, sometimes even before their body finally gives in to death. And while a child’s loss is deeply mourned by their immediate family, the death of an older person often leaves a unfillable void in the lives of countless friends, relatives and associates.

Death is unnatural. It was never meant to be, and Dylan Thomas was right when he said we should “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In our western society we try to pretend that death doesn’t exist, until it happens. Then we try to pretend that it’s all very natural and a blessing really. It’s not. Death is our enemy.

Yet death is a defeated enemy. One man has done what no other could do – walked into death’s jaws and left death behind him with broken teeth. Death’s greatest, most prized victim, the son of God himself, has rendered death powerless to hold it’s prey. As one of my favourite songs says “Death could not hold him down, for he is risen!”.

Christ has destroyed the sting of death. Death is still ugly, cruel, tragic and unnatural, but it is no longer final. The fear of death need no longer rule our lives. What death destroys, Christ will restore. What death steals, Christ will redeem.