Praising the mutilated world

We are living in dark times.

As a man of 66, I can say that much of my life has seen “dark times”. I remember as a little boy, looking at a photo of an elephant mutilated by poachers. I couldn’t quite understand then what I was seeing in the magazine my mum had bought to nurture my love of animals. I remember at school watching a film about the death of a polluted river. I remember, vaguely, the unease we felt about Silent Spring. There was a hole in the ozone layer. Acid rain. And now, half a century later we watch the continued descent of our world with mounting horror.

And the temptation is to run away. Switch off the damned news. Take solace in the wide range of anaesthetics available today. For a time, especially in this most difficult year, I have done just that. I have, after all, my own worries and my own peace of mind to consider.

But the niggling whispers don’t go away. Suffragettes and Stonewall rioters. Rainbow Warriors. Older voices. Calling us to remember something I heard at a Upaya Centre talk just this weekend:

WE WERE MADE FOR THIS WORK.

So…. what can I do? A 66 year old semi-retired man from Scotland who looks after his mother. Well, six of those years I have spent as a funeral celebrant: working with grief, channelling grief, giving voice to grief. But also praising and celebrating lives. Perhaps I have learned something in those years that I might apply to a wider world of grief – dying glaciers, dying communities, dying democracies. Is there still something to praise in this mutilated world?

It’s worth a try.

Portrait by Paul Connell, Derravaragh Studios