Events in Cumbria this week have given a lot of people pause for thought. Behind the headlines, the speculations, the accusations and the anger are a lot of grieving people, people who need love and support and space. For the rest of us there is a reminder both of the fragility of life and the fragility of what is generally termed sanity... but for the grace of God any one of us could be at either end of a lethal weapon, pushed beyond what we can bear, fearing for our lives...
Twice, in as many days, I have travelled through Cumbria by train, enjoying the rolling hills beneath azure blue skies, noting the tiny white dots of sheep and the wiggly lines of dry-stone walls. Despite the tragedy, it is still a beautiful area in which people live quiet lives in reasonable harmony one with another.
As I sat on a train today, mulling over these events and my time away, I found myself recalling a moment a couple of years back when I was doing some hopsital visiting in Leicester. Two older men were nearing the end of their lives, and I had spent some time with each offering, as best I could, support and comfort to the families. Walking back through the long corridors, I passed a young woman clutching a scan photograph in one hand as she talked excitedly about the new life growing inside her. Joy and sorrow, hope and fear, life and death, always cheek by jowl. Perspective or somesuch, not a ying-yang balance as if one cancels out the other, because it doesn't, just a reality that extremes and in betweens will always co-exist.
Whenever I visit someone who is sick - especially if the prognosis is poor - and whenever I conduct a funeral I am reminded of my own vulnerability and mortality. Whenever I see excited children wishing a train journey over so the adventure can begin I am reminded both of life and vitality (is that tautology? probably) and of the cavalier way we treat life (how many times were all of us told off for wishing our lives away when we were younger?). For the person who wants the day over with, there is always someone who'd love just a few moments more. I chatted to a few folk on the trains I travelled on, some were on their way back to resume an extended holiday after attending a funeral, others were visiting family, others were returning from work; conversations I overheard ranged from the trivial to the profound... life in all its fullness was, I suspect, on the 08:56 ex-Northampton and the 11:20 ex-Birmingham.
It's corny in extremis to say 'life is a gift, that's what it's called the present' but actually all we do have is 'now' and it does me no harm to reflect on that.