REVIEWS

WAITING FOR THE LAST BUS

Reflections on Life and Death

Written by: Richard Holloway

Published by: Canongate

Price: £14.99

Richard Holloway’s tall, gaunt, cropped figure is a familiar one in Edinburgh. He is our most turbulent priest, uncheckable, endlessly articulate, above correction if not beyond it, a hard act to follow. In 2012 he gave us his biography, Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt. It became a Sunday Times bestseller which has remained a remarkable and evocative account of his ebbing faith. His new book, Waiting for the Last Bus, contains his reflections on death and dying. I approached it a little warily. Was this another right on clergyman, advocating assisted suicide regardless of the unintended consequences for those less well provided for than themselves? I needn’t have worried. This is a far more thoughtful, wiser and even beautiful book. I have always liked and admired Richard Holloway.

There are seven chapters. It is not closely or abstrusely argued. It is to do with facing up to the limitations of our bodies as they falter, forgiving ourselves and others, being able to distinguish between ordinary sorrow and utterly unbearable grief. These are immensely important questions. Much poetry is quoted, not to show offthat he has such a well-stocked mind, but because wisdom in such elusive areas is hard to find, and even harder to express definitively, and some poets have choices of words and phrases which are worth handing on.

We are reminded that there is no escape from anguish and that fortitude is the most useful of the old virtues. As we grow older, energy diminishes and pains multiply. But much more difficult is giving up the prospect of the future. Richard tells us that a good way to see religion is as humanity’s response to the puzzle of its own existence. Religions, he tells us, are like huge trees, able to shelter many diff erent forms of attachment and meaning in their branches. How true that is and how more true as growing older we are less inclined to attribute blame. Like me, Richard finds what he calls the new assertiveness almost impossible to bear. Faith is more like a river, into whose flowing water one commits oneself, than a mountain which obstructs the view. Cathedrals offer quiet places where you can avoid recruiters out to press-gang your mind, those whose favourite discourse is the adversarial.

Richard has heard all the arguments about free-will – and the endless series of regrets and guilts which go with it. If only I had done this not that. Helpfully, he uses the analogy of a weaver with many diff erent strands rather than predestination from one single moment. We were never as free as we thought we were. Our lives were never so much under our control. He points to forgiveness as that which can reverse the past, the spontaneous energy of compassion, what Nietszche called “plastic energy”. And that leads to reflection on our difficulty in forgiving ourselves and others, our difficulty in losing others, most especially in losing children. Richard refers helpfully to the “steel rails of fear and habit”, and less helpfully (I thought) to near death experiences and reincarnation.

If courage, he tells us, is the wise person’s response to the fear of going, then gratitude is the wise person’s answer to those who insist on staying and lust for yet more life. The opposite of gratitude for life is greed for yet more of it. We all experience loss. That is an essential part of being mortal. Gradually, also as part of being mortal, our attention shifts from the past to the present. Richard tells us that: “One of the privileges of the priest’s life is to be present at both ends of these transformations”. And I can’t think of a better account of the reward of pastoral ministry.

Richard and I enter the same river at diff erent places. I am a believer and he avowedly is not. We’d say somewhat diff erent things but I gladly and wholeheartedly commend this book and its myriad insights. Iain Torrance

REIMAGINING BRITAIN

Foundations for Hope

Written by: Justin Welby

Published by: Bloomsbury

Price: £16.99

As a former finance worker, this hardback book is what you might expect: brisk and business-like with no words wasted, although not necessarily what you might expect from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Head of the Church of England. However, it is a book rooted in realism and founded in hope as the Archbishop strives to show the values that he has identified in the Britain of the 21st century that he believes will sow the seeds for the future.

Drawing on Britain’s history, popular culture and, of course, Christianity, the Archibishop of Canterbury identifies three areas where he already believes values are translated into action, including health, housing and education. He identifies the environment, family finance, peacebuilding and international development and immigration and integration as areas to be added to this mix and is emphatic that faith groups have a key role in both enabling and contributing to a fairer future for all.

Whilst emphatic that the book is a personal work, rather than a treatise reflecting the views of the Church of England or the Anglican Communion, he is nonetheless clear that “this really is one of those rare moments when we have both the risk and the opportunity of rethinking what we should do and be as a country” as he emphasises its message of hope for the future.

Lynne McNeil

This article appears in the May 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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