Help, I need somebody's help

Last week I had a dream which left me thinking about death - not in a morbid way, more about our relationship with those who have died. I wrote to my friend Elizabeth to ask what she thought. Part of her reply was: "And as for the Community of Saints; well....I suppose it is a notion to which I have increasingly warmed, in that it involves our sharing across time and space with those striving for holiness and the life of the spirit, past, present and future....  It provides a sense of solidarity of prayer, purpose and companionship with those who are preparing the way by going before us on the journey of life and death."

© Jane Wenham 2012

I must say I don't see the logic in asking living saints to pray for us and our concerns, and not those who are no longer with us but "with the Lord". That's not the same as being an intermediary between us and God, of whom there's only one (1 Timothy 2.5). But sometimes, it's true, it helps when others support us in prayer; sometimes we run out of words, or energy, or the will to keep on praying. We need others to stand alongside us. That, I guess, is one reason why Jesus invented the Church, which in one old prayer is described as "the Church militant here in earth" as well as triumphant in heaven. I wonder whether some of us limit our vision in a way the Bible doesn't; whether we're just too earthbound. Is the boundary between here and hereafter as impenetrable as all that? And that's what the writer to the Hebrews implies when he talks about us being "surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses", isn't it?


When I was writing about dying and heaven for I Choose Everything, I searched high and low for a story I'd heard which I thought came from Henri Nouwen, the Dutch priest and writer. It was to do with the process of dying. I never found it. Until recently I heard it referred to again - and tracked it down. It's a conversation between twins in the womb. Here it is:

The sister said to the brother, "I believe there is life after birth." 

Her brother protested vehemently, "No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but to cling to the cord that feeds us." 

The little girl insisted, "There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place with light where there is freedom to move." Still, she could not convince her twin brother.

After some silence, the sister said hesitantly, "I have something else to say, and I'm afraid you won't believe that, either, but I think there is a mother." 

Her brother became furious. "A mother!" he shouted. "What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother, and neither have you. Who put that idea in your head? As I told you, this place is all we have. Why do you always want more? This is not such a bad place, after all. We have all we need, so let's be content."

The sister was quite overwhelmed by her brother's response and for a while didn't dare say anything more. But she couldn't let go of her thoughts, and since she had only her twin brother to speak to, she finally said, "Don't you feel these squeezes every once in a while? They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful." 

"Yes," he answered. "What's special about that?" 

"Well," the sister said, "I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face-to-face. Don't you think that's exciting?"

The brother didn't answer. He was fed up with the foolish talk of his sister and felt that the best thing would be simply to ignore her and hope that she would leave him alone.

Henri Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring (Harper: SanFrancisco, 1994), pp. 19-20.

There's a lot I love about the analogy: the simple parallel between being born and dying, the recognition of the painfulness of dying, the womb-like limitation of our perspective, and the excitement of "another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother (the one who's carried us and cared for us) face-to-face".