Taking Tea with Death

by the Revd Naomi Gardom

The beginning of November brings a double commemoration in our liturgical calendar: the feasts of All Saints on 1st November and of All Souls on 2nd. On All Saints, we celebrate not just those named saints whose feasts we celebrate throughout the year, but also all those whose lives of dedication to God have been forgotten by history. And on All Souls, we commend all the dead into God's keeping - again, not just our own known and cherished loved ones, but those whose deaths have gone unmarked, or are now forgotten. But these aren't just 'catch-all' feasts, to make sure no one gets missed out. All Souls is a reminder of the universality of death in our human existence, which makes space to acknowledge the reality of grief and the complicated feelings we may be carrying about the dead. All Saints reminds us, through the examples of the lives and deaths of the saints, that nothing, not even death, is beyond God's power to redeem.

Despite being something that everyone will ultimately go through, death is often very difficult to talk about openly. We are culturally conditioned to use euphemisms, describing the dead as having 'passed' or saying that we have 'lost' people, as if these words can soften the hardness of grief. This evening, we will be holding a Death Café in the Old Library to enable a completely open discussion about death. The Death Café movement is a social franchise, meaning that the name can be used for any event that abides by certain guidelines. It has no affiliation with any faith group or position, and the conversations in a Death Café environment are strictly non-judgemental. Hot drinks and cakes are strongly encouraged, in recognition that this sort of conversation can leave people feeling very vulnerable; cups of tea, as we know, can act as a kind of generalised hug. But it's also an environment in which it's possible to laugh, to talk about the absurdity of death or the strangeness of it, without fear of being judged for making light of it.

For all this, there comes a point in our contemplation of death where human language fails, just as all human invention and ingenuity fail in the face of death. For us in the Christian tradition, this is where the liturgy of the Eucharist can build the bridge that we need between our own grief and loss, our fear of death, and God's assurance that all is safe in God's hands. In our Eucharist for All Souls on Saturday morning, we will do this, in communion with all God's beloved children, living and dead.