Death

Last week a few of us went to see a production of Wit by the Liverpool University Drama Society. The play follows the last days of Vivian Bearing, a professor of John Done poetry, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic ovarian cancer. The play mixes her final hours with flash-backs to pivotal moments in her life, and also quotes heavily John Done's Holy Sonnet X (Death Be Not Proud). The play as a whole was excellent, but something that stood out to me was the comparison of two versions of the poem.



One version finished with the line: And death thou shalt be no more, death, thou shalt die.

The second finished with the line: And Death thou shalt be no more; Death, thou shalt die!


Vivian Bearing saw the second version as far preferable, with its more interesting punctuation implying that death (or Death) was a way that life finished with a bang. She held that the first version was more like sliding out of life, not a pause. She held that Death was preferable to death, and in the final scene, it appears like she is about to get her wish, with moving last words and a dramatic cardiac arrest.

However, it was not to be, and instead her death was much more subtle, drifting off whilst her old professor read to her.

It made me think.

Old Hymns

Firstly, apologies that I've not posted on this blog for a while, exams kind of swallowed up blogging time. So hopefully the pace will pick up again now they're over.

This week has seen the Frontline conference, 3 days of teaching on how to 'Unleash your full potential' featuring teaching form visiting pastors Jimmy Dowds and Larry Stockstill. By all accounts, the whole conference was a great success. Since it was a midweek conference, I was only able to get to two of the evening sessions and was really blessed by Larry Stockstill both times.

However, perhaps surprisingly, both nights, it was the worship that God really spoke to me through. In addition to the usual modern songs, the first evening also involved singing a version of Amazing Grace. My attention was really drawn to one verse in particular:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We've no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

Eternity is going to be fun!