Waiting for the Last Bus Charles Keen

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CHARLES KEEN

Waiting for the Last Bus: Reflections on Life and Death Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, chose in the year 2000 to defrock himself and, since then, has made his name a second time as writer and broadcaster. This book reveals that his doubts had crept up on him over some years, but that it was the Church and its unbending attitudes that estranged him from religion.

His decision has been welcomed by his flock of what he calls ‘wistful children of unbelief’. Does he worry that, in the adjoining pasture, ‘the sheep look up and are not fed’? Probably not, because, for one thing, those wistful children include, he says, many who, like him, have reacted against the rigid assertiveness and dogma of the churches. For his own part, in setting his compass by his own philosophy of good (ethics, he says, must be ‘subject to change’), he has an object of worship sufficient for his purpose.

In the book, he says nothing to denigrate or repudiate God and Christ; his reflections are elsewhere. They chiefly concern death and dying. Having a lifetime’s experience of counselling the dying and the bereaved, he is well equipped to talk about how people react. He knows what saddens them, what frightens them and what comforts them, and he offers much practical advice.

But what seems to intrigue him most is not so much the mystery of death, as the unaccountable accident of existence. If existence is confined within a universe, which had a beginning and will have an end, non-existence must exist, and, quoting the Italian philosopher Leopardi, ‘A naked silence and a most profound stillness must fill the great emptiness of space.’

He consoles himself: ‘We will have proved ourselves better than the gulf that spawned us, because of what we ourselves created.’ He means great music, poetry and art.

Shakespeare seems to have had a similar sense of the impermanence and unreality of the solid world. Prospero dismisses it: ‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind...’ And Holloway quotes Macbeth: ‘Life’s but a walking shadow...’

Christian believers, with no less logic and no more foreknowledge, fill Leopardi’s gulf with the ‘insubstantial’ spirit of God. Surely we all share that uneasy awareness of the unknowable and unimaginable. ‘Here be dragons’, as the old map-makers used to say of unexplored territory.

Much of the book is more down to earth. We share Holloway’s experience of what can cheer us in our last days. Thankfulness for happy days and happy associations can, as he says, create a warm glow. He adds that, just as Catholics find peace of mind in absolution and the last rites, so the act of seeking forgiveness, even from oneself, may bring comfort.

That leads him to the suggestion that many of our malfeasances were not so much our fault as the result of inherent defects. They may have been predestined, he infers, as the kindly counsellor he is. That may be one for the jury.

But it leads him to a digression, which I feel I must challenge. St Peter is remembered for having denied that he was a disciple of Christ three times. He is widely condemned for treachery, and Holloway blames predestination. Peter, he says, was born a traitor and a coward, but didn’t know it until he found himself denying his Lord. Well, we’re all cowards and potential traitors. Peter found the courage to follow his Master, alone, into enemy territory, keeping an eye on him, but incognito. Was it treachery to keep his head down? Ask any spy.

But Holloway loves Peter, too, in spite of what he sees as his predetermined betrayal. His book is a model of kindness and sympathy. The writing is fine, pungent and poetic, and illumines a dark subject. Some of the most moving parts are extracts from his sermons preached at obsequies of people dear to him.

The book is a song; indeed, it is an oratorio, composed by a very worthy man, as he prepares, like a swan, to glide into nowhere.