Endings
A musing on death by Tim Veater.
One gets to certain age when death and its practical implications, becomes a constant back-drop to the mind.
It consists not only of the unachievable paradox of imagining a state of non-existence, of the actual transition of mental and physical close-down, but also the mechanics and practicalities of what happens after.
Who will take care of the estate, if there is one; who will sort and inherit what is left behind; how will the mortal remains be disposed of - burial or burnt; what ceremony if any should accompany the end and where should it be held; what will be the nature of the service, Christian or otherwise; in any event will anyone care to attend or will I be the only attendee; will anyone notice I have gone or miss my presence; what will be the sum total of the contribution I have made to the world or my fellow man?
I am one of those persons who is fascinated by obituaries and grave yards - "The serried ranks of grey, Flecked granite polished stone, Smooth shaped and etched in black, recording names and dates and epitaphs, Of those who didn’t make it through the night" - as I once phrased it in my poem "Resting Place".
Humans are eternally searching for 'meaning and purpose', not least in their own lives, yet we all know in the end, the meaning will disappear with the life and all that will be left is an institution, a building, an inscribed stone, a book, an account or a fading memory.
"The good men do is oft interred with their bones; the evil lives after them." That was a truism that Shakespeare put in the mouth of Mark Antony on the death of Caesar, that has gained a philosophical permanence over the subsequent five hundred or two thousand years, depending how you look on it. Perhaps it should be the motto emblazoned on ever nursery and primary school wall: do you wish to be remembered, if at all, for good or evil?
Sadly however much we may wish the former, the latter may be our fate. We may strive for goodness without much success. Perhaps the only moral obligation on man is to try to do as much good and as little harm as possible.
Of course that begs the question what is 'good' and 'bad', but for the majority it does not require years of study to decide. There is an innate morality in humans, even if it has been deadened or extinguished.
It has been said, "All political careers end in failure", but failure is not limited to them. The best we can hope for is a good life and a good death, meeting it with equanimity and composure.
The Christian belief in the eternal life of the soul may prove a solace but I have my doubts. Christ's death and resurrection was certainly a firmly held belief by his associates and followers at the time, reflecting a factual event that cannot be easily dismissed. It is being celebrated at the moment two millenia on which must say something. It inspired a whole new religion that swept the Middle East and Europe, but it did not stop people dying as they continue to do to this day.
We all live life in death's shadow - of those close to us, of well-known personalities, of ourselves. Even 'Dr Kildare' succumbs eventually as we learned this week, in his case after ninety years lived. We are daily reminded of the thousands of young lives that have been extinguished by inexcusable violence, perpetrated by evil minds, without ever having the opportunity to flower.
If souls live for ever, what an astonishing floral carpet that will be? Can you imagine the untold billions of previous lives, like a plethera of Milky Ways, swirling for ever? Life is a remarkable thing. Death is a remarkable thing too. Are they opposites or actually just a continuum of creation and decline - an eternal, never-ending cycle on which we all find ourselves, evoking an emotional response.
"Alas poor Yorick - I knew him well." Humans so easily forget they are, particularly those raised to positions of power either by birth, election or some other means. Tyrants and their evil ways have always existed. They frequently get their uppance. The mob is notoriously fickle and unforgiving. But even where they are impossible to remove, their lives still end and we hope are followed by a final judgment. The art and role of sarire has not died!
It is said that Roman Emperors were followed by a slave employed to whisper the 'Momento mori' of you "too are mortal, you too shall die". Would that the practice had not lapsed.
Three New Testament verses spring to mind:
Hebrews 9:27 "And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him"
Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
2 Timothy 4:7-8 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but to all who crave His appearing.
Voted favourite hymn by followers of BBC Songs of Praise, "How Great Thou Art" is also a favourite of mine. It includes some words I find particularly moving in stanza 3 and 5 that encapsulate the Christian believer's approach to death and what, perchance, lies beyond. It also resonates with me in other respects as well.
It is based upon a Swedish hymn from 1885 by Carl Boberg(1859–1940) entitled "O Store Gud" but the version we are more familiar with (below) is a paraphrase in English with changes by Stuart Wesley Keene Hine (1899 – 1989)
Hine became a Christian in 1914 when he was fifteen, was greatly influenced by the Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, and became a Plymouth Brethren missionary to Ukraine up to the Stalin induced famine of 1932/3, when millions died. This is termed the 'Holodomor'.
Hines version of the hymn was published the year I was born (1949) and became almost the signature tune of Billy Graham's evangelistic campaigns of the 1950's, when many were converted or 'saved'. is life to some extent parallels my fathers. It is played here (26:30 in) by Ben Maton. Feel free to sing along and be touched emotionally too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmNACalpvlk
As far as I can gather over 112,000,000 doses of the covid vaccine have been injected into humans in the UK since 2020 paid for by the UK government. The cost just for purchase and GP fee is around £20.00.
In other words in a cash-strapped NHS, where waiting lists for operations and treatments have never been longer (6 - 8 million people) over TWO BILLION POUNDS has been blown on this dangerous CON TRICK! You really could not make it up!
There is a parallel between the pharmaceutical industry and the arms industry - in fact to many industries. You first have to create the demand for the product that requires either a 'carrot' or a 'stick'. In the case of the former, desire; in the case of the latter fear, or both.
With covid con it was the desire to be safe and free of disease and the fear of contagion and death. In the case of the armaments industry it actual or potential warfare. In both sectors, if it can be pulled off, it is bonanza time for the companies involved.
Both arms and phamaceutical sectors are having a field day - just check the share price and executive pay packets. However as always there is a down-side.
In the case of Covid it is the short-time and long-time health consequences; in the case of weapons the mass killing of people, infrastructure and culture.
In both contexts there are huge costs to government and ultimately the people through tax. Companies and individuals are enriched, whilst nations are made bankrupt.
That is the madness of a system that no one in power is prepared to challenge and so we all suffer its consequences accordingly.
VIRUSES!
TTV: "It's all very mysterious. Even virologists disagree. Some even believe there is no such thing as a 'virus'. We know people get 'colds', and if it's severe we call it 'flu', but after that it gets much more opaque. Bacteria have for generations - since the mid-Victorian period really - been seen under the microscope. As they proliferated and the method with different stains developed, they were categorised and given names - 'coliform' for the rod-shaped ones and 'cocci' for the round ones, 'gram positive' and 'negative' depending on their reaction to the stain and so on. Because viruses are so much smaller, 'seeing' and identifying them, is much more difficult. In fact it is a bit of a guessing game based not on isolating the 'viruses' themselves, but of using anti-bodies to suggest their presence, rather like using shadows to detect humans! One of the methods employed is the much maligned 'PCR Test' which was used to prove infection with Covid but has been largely discredited, suggesting all the statistics on which the policy was based were bogus. Turns out a positive result is not so much reliant on infection as much as how many times you refine the test. If you do it enough you are sure to find DNA or RNA fragments whether it is associated with identifiable symptoms or not. A 'positive' becomes a factor not of disease but of how many times you run the test! In other words a nonsense. It is why thoughout 'Covid', people who were ill were proving negative in the test and perfectly healthy people proved positive. Also it is worth noting despite innumerable studies, no one has proved covid infectivity, person to person. Now to return to your query regarding 'mutation', it begs a question: how if viruses mutate within the call - they apparently have no life outside it - can a vaccine be developed to prime the immune system to recognise it? That is a fundamental problem that has not been answered. The mRNA vaccine is a little understood process of cell manipulation, instructing body cells to replicate a spike protein which in theory the immune system can recognise and fight. Unfortunately it has been proved to generate T cell activity which changes the cell chemistry and function causing bizarre effects such as uncontrolled cell replication (which we label 'cancer') and proliferation of collagen-type material in the veinous and arterial system that leads to stroke and heart attack. It appears that the code of the mRNA material has genetically engineered at least four protein 'spikes' that actually enable access into the cell, with disease homology. Histologically the protein has been shown to reside in heart tissue, creating the symptoms of endo and myocarditis, respectively the lining of the heart chambers and its surrounding muscle. All the the epidemiological indicators back these cellular level problems, which is why I have consistently tried to warn people against taking the injections." Regards, Tim.
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