A Trip to York Minster

On Saturday we went on a tour of York Minster, conducted by Keith.  Captain B drove us there on his computer.   I was having a lot of trouble with mine - I got to the morning field service meeting, but the speakers kept turning themselves upside down and having red swirls all over them.   

The tour was very interesting the Minster has a fascinating history.  My bro-in-law knows his stuff.

And the tour brought back - to an uncomfortable degree - the teachings of my 1950s Convent school.  We were taught that death was a passage into a terrifying afterlife - eons of torment in purgatory, or even worse hellfire torment for all eternity.  it was a teaching that put me off the idea of God, the Bible and reliigion for such a long time.

It wasn't until many years later I found out that the Bible assures us the dead are "conscious of nothing at all".  We need neither to fear for them, or fear them.

Keith reminded me of this poem, one I had forgotten:

The Child Dying

Edwin Muir

Unfriendly friendly universe

I pack your stars into my purse

And bid you so farewell

That I can leave you, quite go out,

Go out, go out beyond a doubt

My father says is the miracle.

It is so strange to us that we are going to stop existing.   As the Inspired Scriptures tell us, Jehovah has "put eternity into our mind".  We do not want to stop existing. So it is important to know, whatever the magnificent stained glass windows of York Minster may be telling us, that death is not a journey into torment, it is a dreamless sleep, with a wonderful awakening at the other end.