By Roland Ashby
Statements by British PM Boris Johnson about his recent brush with death suggest he may have undergone something of a spiritual awakening. This would not surprise St Benedict, sometimes described as the father of Western monasticism, who in the sixth century advised his monks to “Always keep death before you”.
While at first glance to the modern mind this may seem to suggest a morbid fascination with death, Boris Johnson has shown it to be, on the contrary, a profound and joyful insight. A few months ago I could never have imagined that the newly elected conservative leader would be describing the National Health Service as “our greatest national asset” and “the beating heart” of the nation; and, in a notable rebuff to “Mrs T”, that he had discovered that there was indeed “such a thing as society”.
Only a brush with death could have brought about such a seismic shift in attitude. In the silence of his ICU ward, confronted with his fragility and mortality, there was an awakening to what truly matters in life. That we are not just our bodies, or our careers, achievements and plans, and in the haunting words of the courageous Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations: “You wake from dreams of doom – and for a moment – you know: beyond all the noise and gestures, the only real thing [is] love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.”
The late Anthony Bloom, who was for over 50 years the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in the UK, and had been a medical doctor before he became a priest, wrote about helping a parishioner to face the news that he was ill with an inoperable cancer. After a rigorous process of assisting him to make “his peace with everyone and everything”, the parishioner said to him with shining eyes: “My body is almost dead, and yet I have never felt so intensely alive as I feel now.”
It is fitting that a new hospital in London, tasked with treating those with the coronavirus, has been named after Florence Nightingale. She said, “Life is a splendid gift - there is nothing small about it”, and described nursing as an art which “requires an exclusive devotion” because the body is “the temple of God's spirit”.
Those modern day Nightingales, the nurses that Boris Johnson thanked so movingly for their constant vigilance, and their pure, undivided attention, like Anthony Bloom with his parishioner, had also given him the gift of pure love. The 20th century French mystic Simone Weil describes such pure, selfless attention as pure prayer.
It is an experience that gives rise to pure gratitude, which in turn gives rise to pure joy.
Pure love, gratitude and joy are all at the heart of spiritual awakening, show us the beauty of human life at its best, and give us the greatest reasons for wanting to live.
This article was published in TMA (The Melbourne Anglican) in its May 2020 edition. See http://tma.melbourneanglican.org.au/