Eleanor Jane Mair, our daughter, died on the 21st April in Ninewells Hospital, as result of trauma caused by alcoholism. She was a beloved and loving person, who cared for everyone except herself, bringing joy through what she was but also sorrow through what she was doing to herself. She is with God.)

(For back story read Where shall we meet? 1-4)

M: I’ve been thinking about the way we brought you up, especially as a teenager, recognising that we allowed you the freedom you demanded without considering how skewed in favour of males was the society you entered. I imagine you found yourself pressured by older boys for sex, even while you counted them as mates. We failed to prepare you for that.

E: At first, everything was wonderful; hormones, music, dance, boys, sexual exploration.Then it wasn’t; innocence, ignorance, rape. Not that I called it rape then; it was what was expected of girls. Eventually I found that I could protect my body with my mind: I could be smarter than them, manage them, while still remaining popular. I was competent because I could think, foresee, plan. I even became a trusted part of the music scene, organising entry at the most popular club in the city.

So I was a success, but wounded and oppressed by relationships in which men dominated.

We should have been wiser on your behalf, although you probably wouldn’t have thanked us then. But tell me about, about M, let’s call him that, seeing he’s still alive in this world. You were committed, you set up house together.

I was in love. He was a farm boy, different from the schoolboys I’d known, wilder, more naive, generous, energetic, animal. But, as I discovered, possessive, jealous, violent. I tried to manage the household, shopped, cooked, cleaned, while he wasted money. We got seriously in debt. He hit me often. I began to drink seriously as a way of managing myself and him.

Why didn’t you tell us?

Because I thought you despised him as uneducated.

I didn’t, you know. At first I was happy because you were walking, climbing and camping with him. Sometimes I joined you and enjoyed his company as a young man; a bit of competition and some mutual respect. I remember you telling us to stop racing one another on the hill so that you could walk comfortably.

Bright days on many hills, in the Cairngorms and Torridon. M strong, delighted, at peace. Most of my first times on Munroes were with him. Wet days too, huddled in damp bothies, with huge backpacks. We discovered our land together.

Yes, I remember meeting you and M on a suddenly mild New Year’s day in Kinlochewe, to climb Liathach, a mighty hill. Plowtering through wet snow to reach the ridge with Tara your dog. A good day on the hill followed by your good cooking and some beers. But then after an argument over a quiz he lost his temper and smashed a pane of glass with his hand. Blood spilt everywhere, he ran off for hours.

I tried so hard to make it work, but he didn’t try, and he continued to hit me. By the time we split I had a huge debt, a drink problem, and a conviction that I wasn’t worth much.

I helped your finances but not your self -respect.

THE CORPSE AWAKENS

When even a Tory chancellor had to admit that Universal Credit was as much use to a poor person as a chocolate fireguard, the writing was on the wall, or rather on the tombstone, for Iain Duncan Smith, the inventor of UC. They didn’t even need to bump him off as he’d been brain dead for sometime, only to tidy him him quickly to his place of honoured repose.

Only months later, the news media carry a report that IDS has been pressing the PM for a speedy relaxation of the current lockdown. Subterranean channels have whispered to IDS that by and large only the poor are dying from this virus, indeed that a gratifying number of them are black or brown, and that therefore the onward march of capitalism could be quickly resumed.

He has been consulting with colleagues, we are told. Imagine this meeting, dear reader! IDS, still looking a bit CRUMBLY from his sojourn underground, welcomes friends who are VERY GREY INDEED, many of them HELD TOGETHER ONLY BY THEIR CLOTHES, all exuding A WHIFF OF THE MAUSOLEUM. Quickly they agree on a guiding principle: that the interests of CAPITAL and its OWNERS are more important than the LIVES OF HUMAN BEINGS. The freedom of the individual (to become rich at the expense of others) is at stake and all barriers to fruitful commerce should be removed immediately! Of course Covid-19 will still be active. But the undead see it as a friendly scourge. If they, the UNDEAD, could find a way of paying the virus to concentrate even more on what is left of the NHS, they would do so.

The mouldy killers are cheered when they are joined by SIR RICHARD BRANSON, whose HAIRSTYLE has proclaimed his membership of the UNDEAD for many years, and who has proven his commitment to the cause by polluting the earth with his aeroplanes. He has shown admirable impertinence by demanding subsidy from the government to CARRY ON BOILING THE PLANET.

The more thoughtful of the POSTHUMOUS POSERS speak of how the pandemic has revealed some facts about society that their class of person would prefer to keep hidden. People are not ALL IN IT TOGETHER, except in the sense that some are IN CLOVER while others are IN THE SHIT. This truth has been sadly evident as it becomes clear that millions of people were being paid WASHERS to do very unpleasant work, leaving them without savings to carry them through the lockdown. Others have continued to work in Stalinesque warehouses on shifts of up to 12 hours fully monitored, with their urine rerouted through their ears for greater ease of disposal. Much more of this kind of exposure and the cause of capital might be gubbed. They all agree that all the PRIVILEGES OF A FREE BORN ENGLISHMAN SHOULD BE RESTORED FORTHWITH, and the lockdown ended.

But who amongst them will represent this platform in public? UNDEAD activists like BORIS and MATT, with their strange jerky movements are accepted by the public, but most of IDS’s friends might leave BITS OF THEMSELVES LYING AROUND. With his customary courage and utter lack of self-awareness IDS agrees once more to enter the public arena at this critical moment. He forgets that when he was investigating poverty in Glasgow Easterhouse, the local criminals asked for him to be removed as a bad advert for community life.

I only hope that readers of this blog communicate the truth about those advocating a speedy return to normality, lest any citizen remain unaware that for them normality means a close ACQUAINTANCE WITH WORMS and CARELESSNESS WITH PERSONAL HYGIENE.

Eleanor Jane Mair, our daughter, died on the 21st April in Ninewells Hospital, as result of trauma caused by alcoholism. She was a beloved and loving person, who cared for everyone except herself, bringing joy through what she was but also sorrow through what she was doing to herself. She is with God.)

Has anything surprised you since you died?

Everything of course. Not least that there’s an I to be surprised! Most, perhaps, that even the I has changed…

You don’t want to drink?

I’m learning not to miss it. But I’m no longer just myself.

How do you mean?

Well, remember my dog Tara?

I have a memory of the poor brute with a dozen puppies, all trying to suckle at once.

She was so young when she had them. She’d been stolen while I was in a shop and was gone weeks before she fetched up at the dog refuge and I got her back pregnant. She didn’t really know how to cope with them, but they all survived and were given to good homes. That’s how we bonded.

I remember running with you and her in Aberdeen alongside the river Don. She had a kind of daft playful way of splashing into the water…

She was with me in some bad times, through violent relationships, through weeks of no money, through being left alone because I was pissed, yet she always came to lay that big head in my lap. The love of an animal is unconditional.

She became ill at our house, when you were visiting and we found a good vet who diagnosed kidney failure, and we took her home and made a fuss of her. But then she was so unwell we had to take her back to the vet to be euthanased while you held her.

I had her cremated and got the ashes which we scattered in the surf at Tentsmuir, where she ran into the waves.

So, you were saying you discovered something new about Tara?

Yes. I thought I would have to look for her, or maybe she would find me by smell, but she’s here, part of me, not separate, or I’m part of her, the two of us together, although she still has her life and I have mine. Occasionally I feel I’m smelling something through her nose.

One of my serious criticisms of Christianity is its adoption of a very European way of thinking about the universe as being composed of material bits. Buddhism on the other hand, knows that all things are without substance, changeable and connected. I do not stop at the end of my fingers but continue into the surrounding ecosystem of which I am a part.

Of course Jesus wasn’t a Buddhist, but he saw that God was connected to a dying sparrow, and that he was connected to the homeless, naked, starving, sick humanity in his nation.

So he may have been connected to you in your illness, and still..?

I’ve worked out my new relationship with Tara, it may take a bit longer with Jesus.

(Eleanor bJane Mair, our daughter, died on the 21st April in Ninewells Hospital, as result of trauma caused by alcoholism. She was a beloved and loving person, who cared for everyone except herself, bringing joy through what she was but also sorrow through what she was doing to herself. She is with God.)

To follow the story, read parts 1 and 2

So did you think about your intellectual snobbery?

Yes, and I wondered if all our encounters were going to focus on my faults and failings?

No, we can do mine as well of course

Sounds a bit negative. I don’t want to be intrusive, but I imagined that in ……in…….I imagined that, eh, where you are, things might be more positive…

(She chuckles)

Let’s call it “heaven” seeing that’s familiar to you, as long as you think of a presence rather than a place. And yes, of course, things are “positive” although that suggests they might be otherwise.

I’m not sure if I follow you.

Here, things are as they are, and they are good as they are. The facts are friendly; God is in the facts. So the truth about me or you is never negative, but always joyful, like the truth of the swallows returning every spring.

They are back, yes, I watched them hunting near the beach yesterday…. I don’t suppose you have swallows where you are…

Why not? What would heaven be without animals?

Can I repeat that as a report from the front line, as it were?

The more often the better. But let’s go back to where we can meet, in my defeats and victories, and yours. And seeing you’re still anxious. let’s choose something you would call “positive,” like say, words.

Words! What d’you mean?

One of our earliest meeting places, our love of words…

D’ you remember how you shocked a nice lady from the church by pointing to the “big penis in the sky”?

Because you’d been teaching me basic human anatomy and the names of the planets, and I mixed them up….I suppose I was three or so…

And you loved bedtime books and rhymes and riddles and jokes

And swear words! Appropriate or inappropriate, I loved words and word games, later poems. We used to sit after a meal reading poems to each other, sometimes our favourites, sometimes from a particular anthology….

You always read like a child with emphasis on the rhythm of the poem, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” well not quite as heavy as that.

No point in a tune without its rhythm. As a teenager I found John Donne, and never left him. The mystery of words that seemed to have come from inside one’s skin, words that somehow said me.

I’ve been thinking about him in the past few days, since ……. since you……since….

Since I died, yes, it’s a good word, we can say it…

Since you died I’ve been saying his poem “Death be not proud, though some hath called thee/

“Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so/ And soonest our best men” (and women!) “with thee do go,”/

“Rest of their bones and soul’s delivery.” Ach child, is that how it is with you?”

Yes.

Sometimes I long for it.

Eleanor Jane Mair, our daughter, died on the 21st April in Ninewells Hospital, as result of trauma caused by alcoholism. She was a beloved and loving person, who cared for everyone except herself, bringing joy through what she was but also sorrow through what she was doing to herself. She is with God.)

You suggested that we meet in places that were crucial in your life. Yesterday (see previous blog) we talked about our relationship as daughter and father, and one of the barriers between us. Moving on in your life, I suppose we come to your education…

Too bloody right we do. And especially to Broomhill Primary School, Aberdeen…

Yeah, OK it wasn’t great. Your mum was mentioning it yesterday as one of our mistakes.

One small mistake for you maybe, but a giant misery for me. Remember I’d started my schooling in Coventry where we lived. I went to Earlsdon Primary School, which was run on the child-centred principles which were common to good schools in England. Each child was important, and each process of learning. To come from there to a school where the teachers were all- important and the children mere vessels to be filled with knowledge, and the whole enterprise backed by a unearned middle class sense of superiority, was devastating. Of course I didn’t understand then what sort of institution it was; I just knew they didn’t like me and I felt afraid.

We were aware that you didn’t like school, but felt it was just an inevitable culture shock, which you would outgrow….

Yes, but you tended to believe them, at parent’s nights and such, rather than me, like I should talk less and concentrate more, meaning I should become the kind of pupil they wanted.

I did listen to your deadly accounts of your teachers, and tried to assure you I was on your side.

Oh yes, yes, that just made it worst, because knowing you agreed with me made me even less amenable and more likely to be in trouble. In effect you said, I’m on your side but fight your own battles. How could I win?

I hear what you’re saying…..

And did you really agree with me. Didn’t you and mum believe that education was a matter of knowing stuff, which a good teacher would know and communicate to the pupils. Isn’t that your view of school and uni, that there’s culturally valuable stuff which just has to be handed on? That it isn’t for pupils to argue over it?

Come on, that’s a parody of my attitude. Of course, there’s Shakespeare and Joyce and Hume and Wittgenstein and Darwin and Einstein and Beethoven and Bartok and…..

And not a woman or a black amongst them! The list of people worth knowing was skewed by prejudice, but more than that there was no attempt to teach us how to choose what we needed to know, and no guidance on how judge the relevance or value of any part of the cultural tradition. I can put it that way now, but then I was just presented with teachers who said, Take it or leave it, but this is the knowledge by which you will be judged. Even you and mum tended to judge me that way….there were hoops to be jumped through, and I wasn’t jumping very quickly or gracefully.

Never! I knew how oppressive school can be, and I certainly didn’t judge you by those standards.

I believe you now, but then I wasn’t sure because you did nothing; you didn’t rescue me. Well you eventually did when you got me out of an equally horrible secondary school, into a much better one..but by that time, damage had been done. I suspected I was a failure and would be found out.

Sorry, El…

But are you really? So even when I studied theology and trained for the ministry of the church you were always questioning if I had enough knowledge, whether I’d bothered to read the Desert Fathers, or Luther, or 2nd Samuel! As if that’s what faith is about. Admit it, you’re a theological snob, looking down on believers you call evangelicals or fundamentalists…

Now come on, there must be a place for knowledge in any human endeavour!

Love builds up, St Paul says, but Knowledge puffs up.

When you of all people start quoting St Paul to me, I know it’s time to stop. I’ll think about all this and then we can talk again, I hope.

(Eleanor Jane Mair, our daughter, died on the 21st April in Ninewells Hospital, as result of trauma caused by alcoholism. She was a beloved and loving person, who cared for everyone except herself, bringing joy through what she was but also sorrow through what she was doing to herself. She is with God.)

M: Yes, I believe you are with God, and maybe that should be sufficient comfort. You are of course presently in my dreams, vital and strong as you were once. I know that such dreams are the product of my own mind rather than supernatural information, but even so can they point beyond themselves to something more substantial? I don’t think you had an orthodox view of life beyond death, and you would certainly have been sceptical about my dreams, but if there’s anything in the classic Christian view of resurrection, tell me this: where shall we meet?

E: Maybe we can meet in the places that mattered to me, where I succeeded and where I failed, where I conquered and where I was wounded, where I was loved and where I was abused, where I had hope and where I felt despair, where I was myself and where I had to hide.

M: Did I hear you correctly? Remember, my dear, that all this is coming through my mind, which has its own agenda.

E: Maybe your own mind, like your own existence, is not as unconnected as you think.

M: OK but where to start? They say the basis of personality is formed by the experiences of the first three years of life. If so, we can go back to Dumbarton, where we lived from 1969 to 1975. You were born in 1971, to Janet who took leave from teaching, and to me, who continued full-time work as a minister. At the time I suffered the delusion that I was the Messiah. My task and my way of doing it was all-important and absorbing, so much so that I neglected you and my wife for at least the first year of your life. She however was your constant companion and carer. Soon however it became plain that our budget demanded a second income, so she returned to work, part-time initially, then full-time. This meant that at first I had to look after you mornings, then deliver you to and fetch you from nursery school.

That forced me into knowing you as my daughter, and enjoying the astonishing pleasure of being with you. I would like to say that this cured me of my arrogant male obsession with my important calling, but it did not; and I am sure there were subsequent times when I neglected you. I know this behaviour put unfair burdens on my wife, but doubtless it impacted you as well?

E: You think I’m going to answer questions now that you never bothered asking me in life? Still, confession of your messiah complex is new and overdue. It must have damaged many more people than your immediate family… your first congregation, your second, your last? Your friends?

M: How come you can’t answer new questions but you can ask them? Still I’ll try to answer. The complex itself was a desperate device to bury the sense of being a failure and a shit which was the outcome of my upbringing. And yes, it must have damaged the congregations I served. But it stayed with me for a long time until your mother’s capacity to see something better in me, wore it away. More or less. So I guess you, like me, were damaged by parental defects, but there, in that sweet and dangerous place, we can continue to meet. Please.

E: “They fuck you up your mum and dad

They do not mean to but they do.

They give you all the faults they had

And add some others, just for you.”

The great philosopher Philip Larkin, maybe we could read him together….

The BBC has been over many years a source of facts in our lying democracy. Its journalists are often conventional but many of them are capable of unearthing carefully concealed facts and making them available to the public. That is why the Tory Government of the UK wants to destroy it; and why sectarian elements of the Labour Party do not rush to its defence.

The Panorama programme of the BBC has discovered clear evidence that in spite of warnings the government did nothing to gather sufficient stock of personal protective items for medical staff, effectively sending them naked into a battle against a deadly virus; and then a) downgraded its rating of the deadliness of the virus and b) downgraded the minimum requirements for protection of medical staff, in order to disguise the extent of its carelessness.

Doubtless the Government will seek to deny these facts, by vapid arguments about the unprecedented nature of Covid 19 and claims that the BBC is biased. Nobody should listen to them. Facts are facts, and they have been avoiding these awkward facts for some weeks by simply refusing to answer journalists’ questions about their preparation for the pandemic. Their sneaky slogan about taking the right advice from the right people and doing the right thing at the right time, is designed to suggest that any sensible person would have done nothing at all to prepare for a pandemic.

Some may ask in bewilderment,

BUT WHY DID THEY DO NOTHING?

That question is linked to another:

HOW DID BORIS JOHNSON RECOVER FROM CORONAVIRUS?

I can only ask the unbiased reader to look at the evidence above:

BORIS IS ONE OF THE UNDEAD. NO VIRUS CAN BE FATAL TO HIM!

Naturally the UNDEAD are not that concerned about loss of life. That is in fact their deep desire and their mission: the more dead, the more potentially undead. Now some may think that this is an extreme and cranky explanation of Government policy, but I want you to think this out very clearly:

WHY, IN THE FACE OF A MEDICAL EMERGENCY DID A GOVERNMENT MAKE SURE THAT ITS AVAILABLE MEDICAL STAFF HAD TO RISK DEATH TO DO THEIR JOBS?

You may say incompetence (I’ve said that too), you may say hatred of the NHS ( yeah ok) you may say its a complete F-up ( sure..) you may say they only care about themselves and they’ve all got private medical insurance (true enough) but NONE OF THESE EXPLAINS THEIR BRUTAL UNCONCERN. THEY ARE THE UNDEAD, ANXIOUS ABOVE ALL TO SPREAD THEIR HALF-LIFE TO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

So I have to issue a WARNING.

If you start to feel that your personal importance is not being recognised…

If you think that immigrants are taking over………

If you suspect that your neighbours may be against you….

If you want to bring back capital punishment…..

If you want politicians that put our country first……

If you read the Daily Mail …..

IF YOUR RIGHT CHEEK IS A BIT CRUMBLY….

YOU’RE CATCHING UNDEAD…..AND IT MAY BE TOO LATE!

Christian hope of resurrection comes from two sources

1. The Judaism of the Pharisees, for whom it was an extension of classic Jewish faith in a Creator God, who had a special relationship with them, as those who would reveal his nature to the world, as part of his inclusive plan to perfect his creation. Within the first century BCE Pharisees taught that the dead would share in the world to come, and would not be left in Sheol, the abode of used-up people. Because the dwellers in Sheol were bodiless, it is likely that resurrected people were seen as embodied. It is notable that personal fulfilment beyond death was linked to the fulfilment of all creation. Jesus himself held to this teaching, and defended it against a satirical story which featured a seven times married woman: who would get her in the resurrection? Jesus dismissed this as making the error of seeing heaven as a continuation beyond death of earthly habits. “In heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven.” He meant that resurrection was a transformation beyond human understanding.

2. Reflection on the life, ministry and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Notice I do not add his resurrection to this list. Let me be clear: I think it a likely historical fact that his followers had experiences of him after his death, and that they formed a community which continued his ministry and looked forward to his return as God’s agent in the time of cosmic transformation. “That God raised him from the dead on the third day” became their witness to his presence amongst them. Resurrection in the form of firstly, lists of witnesses to his risen life, and then, detailed stories of the resurrection event, developed later in the life of the community, and are variously retold by the writers of the gospels.

3. These stories embody the result of the community’s reflection on its memory of Jesus, and his continuing influence on their lives. They embody common elements which were seen as essential doctrines:

A. Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the Roman Administration and buried.

B. The same Jesus was alive.

C. He was seen by many followers as possessing a body which bore the marks of crucifixion, although it was not subject to the same restraints as human bodies.

D. He was present in the community, for example in the Community Meal, but was also present with God in heaven.

E. He was seen as having overcome evil and death

F. He commanded his followers to take his story into the gentile world.

G. His intimate role with the community was taken over by the divine spirit which was also his spirit.

H. The forgiveness of sins remained as much a part of his risen life – in and through his community – as of his earthly ministry.

These are doctrines embodied in story and preaching. They are not historical events. By means of narrative and metaphor, they express the convictions and practice of a believing community. But they are perceived as “what must have happened.” They are an attempt at a magical realism which narrates a fuller version of events than a video camera. So we would be mistaken in trying to cut through to find what “actually happened.” Rather we have to ask what they mean.

The Implications of Jesus’ resurrection for the doctrine of personal resurrection, were considerable, and can be detected in the letters of Paul. At first, in some communities, the emphasis was on the return of Jesus to end the present evil era of the world. At that time, envisaged as imminent, he would reward his true disciples with eternal life. But as the end was delayed, people asked Paul about those disciples who had died meantime. Paul answered that they would be resurrected, to share in the new world.

A complication arises with the notion that the return of Jesus will also be a judgment on the world.In Matthew 25, we find a parable of judgement, in which the King identifies with the needy and least important, rewarding those who have cared for them, and condemning those who have not. Resurrection life is seen as reward and not entitlement.

The Greek notion of the immortality of the soul also contributed to the teaching of the church communities, especially when the majority of such communities were Greek -speaking. This notion explicitly excluded the material body from life after death. Hybrid teachings, for example that souls would be given separate life after death, until the day of judgment when they would be reunited with their bodies, were developed.

As belief in an imminent return of Jesus faded, the intimate connection between personal and cosmic renewal was lost. Resurrection was of disembodied souls, and sometimes judgment was envisaged as consequent on death, with an immediate allocation of the soul to heaven or to hell, and later, purgatory. Nevertheless hope in an imminent return was not completely lost often surfacing in the life of fervent communities who might think they had been given the date and time of this event. For them, resurrection was primarily an eschatological event. It’s interesting that such communities, often considered as nutters by the mainstream church, have rediscovered an important theme of early Christianity.

There are two images of God that for me make sense of resurrection:1. The universe exists IN God, who has withdrawn in order that there may be space within God for all the independent processes of evolution and life. Think of this space as a womb and this earthly life as development. Dead persons are born into the life of God who will ask them to share it.2. God is the Cosmic Persuader who relates to every event in the universe luring it towards perfection. Because this often fails we can also call God the fellow sufferer who understands. If we are willing however, God completes our falling short, in this life and beyond. To the persuasive God, no event, or cluster of events like a human being, is ever forgotten and left behind.

These images arise from thinking of God and human life in the context of a universe which is still being created. In God’s love the perfection of the universe excludes nobody who wants to be part of it.

This seems far from the cosy notion that granny’s still doing her knitting up there, but Jesus had already knocked that on the head. A theory of resurrection involves a theory of the universe.

POEM BY HUGH MACDIARMID

On the Western Seaboard of South Uist

……Los muertos abren los ojos a los que viven

I found a pigeon’s skull on the machair,

All the bones pure white and dry, and chalky,

But perfect,

Without a crack or a flaw anywhere.

At the back, rising out of the beak,

Were domes like bubbles of thin bone,

Almost transparent, where the brains had been

That fixed the tilt of the wings.

This is famous firstly because almost all of its words were taken without acknowledgment from a story by the Welsh author Glyn Jones. McDiarmid made them into this poem, but refused to give any credit to Jones. Secondly, because it is very beautiful. It is a meditation on life and death. The skull is perfect because it is dead, white, delicate, and complete; complete that is, apart from the brains, that are said to have fixed (almost mechanically?) the tilt of the wings. This modest word “tilt” reminds the reader of the absent live creature. The poise of the moving creature was fixed by an absent organ called brains. It is often carelessly printed as “brain” which is completely wrong, hinting at a mind, whereas the plural suggests something of the same kind as “bubbles of bone” but with a different function.

The huge gap between the skull and the living pigeon is not minimised but rather emphasised by the last line, and yet the difference is only a matter of material brains. Sentient life is reduced to the tilt of wings and death to an absence of brains. Somehow, nevertheless, the poem is not reductive but celebratory of life which like the skull is delicate, beautiful, natural and marvellous.

MacDiarmid was against the Presbyterian “sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life” because it seemed a heavy act of force majeure against natural process. Of his father’s death he wrote, “A living man upon a deid man thinks/ and ony sma’er thocht’s impossible.” In Island Funeral” one of his greatest poems, he celebrates the naturalness of death and burial as a statement of ecological wisdom that includes humanity. “Every force evolves a form” he says, but the form, however lovely or significant, does not last forever. But whenever and wherever the force recurs, so will the form.

Is it possible to hold on to this wisdom, while also hoping for resurrection?

Consider these analogies:

MacDiarmid had a fierce love of the natural world, which he envisaged as a partner who cooperated with his human nature in the creation of beauty. The force of that love evolved into many forms including this poem, which is nothing if not alive.

Indeed, although the poet is dead, I value his memory, and receive his work with loving appreciation. Out of the force of my encounter with this poem, MacDiarmid takes form and lives for me, perhaps also for those with whom I share it.

I have always suffered from biophilia; I love the world and all its creatures. I sense that their forms have evolved from a force of love. Human children too have evolved not only out of their parents’ love, but out of that love which moves the sun and the other stars.

This love which is God shares and remembers the poem written by every life, in its particularity, contingency and uniqueness, enabling its force to take a new form in his/her presence.

This is part of God’s persuasion of the universe towards perfection: no life is perfect but no life is lost.

At my daughter’s funeral service today, we heard from the scripture of John’s gospel, Jesus saying: ‘I will lose nothing of all the father has given me, and I will raise it up on the last day.”