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  • Writer's pictureRevd John King

HE KINDLY STOPPED


‘Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.’ The words are those of a Dean of St Paul’s, better known as one of England’s great poets. Like others who have grappled with the meaning of the Gospels, Donne did not shrink from death. He knew it must come to us all. He knew, too, that we experience a little death when we sleep.


‘Be absolute for death,’ said Shakespeare’s Duke. When we take that uncompromising stand, any outcome is all the sweeter.


No-one is spared, said the poet Shirley. ‘Death lays his icy hand on kings.’ ‘Sceptre and crown must tumble down….’


Emily Dickinson, whose poems sometimes baffle us, could not stop for Death. ‘He kindly stopped for me.’


If death is the destination we cannot avoid, whether we are poets, kings or don’t knows, we do well to make ready for it. The Grim Reaper (as some like to think of him) does not arrange interviews or applications. He mostly comes unannounced.


Death, in the last document in the Bible, was put on show riding a sickly pale animal. His expertise was slaughter – by sword, famine, pestilence and wild beasts. We move from individual deaths to wholesale destruction of the living.


This is hardly what a reader might expect in the way of cosmic or galactic scale. The writer is aware that his planet is well provided for with blood-thirsty warriors and men of evil intent. None the less, his range extends beyond planet earth. His imagination takes him to the essence of things, to the contest between good and evil that we find underpinning Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. He must have had in mind 1 Corinthians 15.


BACKING UKRAINE

A coffee morning at St Andrew’s, Taunton raised £2,000 for Ukraine.


The pandemic hs led to a rethink about choir robes. They will be worn only on festive occasions. The spire is illuminated at the request of parishioners for family occasions etc. The Vicar is Robin Lodge.


If you have a comment on this post please send an email to Revd John King at johnc.king@talktalk.net Edited extracts may be published. To forward this to a friend click on the chain icon below.



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