Article in Stretton Focus, January 2012
Those who know their ‘Shropshire Lad’ will recognise the words in my title. They are from the poem ‘On Wenlock Edge’ where Housman is looking back to the times of the Roman occupation. He was saying “Once the Romans were here, and now I am; they are now ‘ashes under Uricon’ and I’ll soon be on my last journey to the crematorium”.
Houseman’s pessimistic outlook informs most of his poetry. In this case, he raises for us the question of an after-life. Will there be an after-life? And if so, what will it be like? It is inconceivable that any final answer can be given, but this has not prevented religions from doing so, and there are different varieties on offer. Inevitably, they are all projections of life on earth, but in a more idyllic form. The after-life has been pictured as a paradise, where all suffering is over; a realm of joy and peace; a heavenly city with gates of pearl and streets of gold. A favourite Christmas Carol ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, looks forward to being “dressed in white and waiting around” – which is not a prospect I find very attractive!
Just as the Church’s theology has had to adapt to the scientific discoveries of the likes of Galileo, Darwin, Freud and Einstein, so today we have to see life in the context of an ever expanding universe, and our place in it. There is an energy or force that has been creating the universe for billions of years until the present time; and will continue to do so without end (who could possibly conceive of an end to ‘creation’?).
We are the self-conscious product of that Creative Force, and on our physical death, our self-consciousness (or spirit or soul), could return to its source and be involved in the ongoing evolution of whatever it is the Creative Self-Consciousness has in mind. That sounds exciting to me, and something I could look forward to.
Donald Horsfield
