The Final Frontier

It's been a long day and much of it has been taken up with remembering and honouring the dead.
Death is the last frontier in our society and one which we don't really want to think about let alone speak about.
It's one of our role as priests in society to talk about death: to look death square in the face and somehow to enable others to do the same.
So tonight we gathered with those who had lost people this year, as our liturgy says "the beloved and the bereft" not to seek answers rather not to deny the reality of death.
It's hard, but in so many areas of our national life we are in denial about death, not least the dying parts of our economy and society. In looking into this death we somehow find life, maybe our communities would too.