A friend has made a film, its him talking with a friend of his who is dying. He’s posted it and I may have shared it, I don’t remember.
Right now, I don’t want to check that or even attempt to share it again because, since I watched it, I’ve remained with it, it’s been with me and I don’t want to disconnect with what it has given me, what it has connected me to and how it is still speaking to me.
The film is about a life and life, it’s about things that don’t get talked about, it’s about lived experiences and depths of pain, longing, despair and madness that nearly all the time we push away and do so in a million of ways and for most of our lives, until we reach the moment where, as in this film, all the pushing in the world does not make it go away. Most of us don’t know what happens then, for me, my friends film is about that moment.
The two men in this film and in the situation which life has visited upon them, as it will do eventually with me, are doing something radical and revolutionary in the face of it and I don’t know if I will or can do the same.
In a very calm almost understated way and with great dignity they are talking about it, they are being with it, they are naming it, they are sharing it. They are not pushing away, its horror, its pain its madness and they are allowing it to be lived.
Several times whilst watching the film I wanted to stop, I wanted to fast forward, it was uncomfortable, it brought back memories and it was painful and I cried and I hurt. But as I allowed it, as I didn’t push it away, something else started to happen and only in writing it now can I name that.
What started to happen was not what I expected and the words that eventually came to me to describe it, were even less expected and to the point of shock…. here are those words …
‘The peace that passes all understanding’.
That’s what happened.
A depth, a breadth and an overwhelming sense of peace beyond my understanding and transcending even the ‘religious’ type language my simple mind resorted to describe the experience.
I have had this experience only once before, many years ago, in the home of two very young friends, both were dying and both were naming it, not fighting it, not pushing it away and both were living it. Their home previously filled with the conflicts, despairs and pains of life was transformed into an experience of a peace beyond understanding, I remember it filling the air, in every room and over days and throughout long nights. Even having experienced that whilst still very young myself, I still chose to forget it, to push it away, until now.
I’m not sure what I will push away today, I’m not sure what I will chose not to name, or not to talk about today. I don’t know what life will visit upon me today. that I will deny or seek to avoid and self-medicate as so often before. Right now, all I know is my friends’ film and his friend, who is now at peace, are inviting me to do something different. I love you David and I love you Stephen, even though I never met you Stephen, and thank you both for this experience of peace.
Coda: Since writing this peace, David has also died and in a way which he decided for himself. I can only hope, can only pray that, for him, it was not an act of pushing away but an embracing of a peace that the world could not give… Sometimes I guess it is like that.
Br. Stephen Morris FCC
