In a more agnostic culture than the one I grew up with it's a challenge to know how to talk meaningfully about something so enormous when we don't really understand it. There is scepticism about the afterlife these days. But however sceptical people may be about heaven and hell, it always feels brutal to speak of the total extinction of personality, when the personality concerned is someone you know. Whether we believe or don't believe about life after death we tend to soften the language of finality, to resort to metaphor, to saying death is like this or like that even the death is not like anything. That is its majesty. As a priest who conducts funerals I find the language of faith, with poetry, music and acts of remembrance are what allow us to make the transition between life and death, to discover that death, though a change of state, is not the end of being.",
在一个比我所处环境更崇尚不可知论的文化环境中，去含义隽永的谈论一个自身都不甚了了的大问题总是一项巨大的挑战。现在有很多人对身后事持怀疑态度。不管人们怎么怀疑天堂地狱，讲一个人的一切就这么彻底消失总给人一种残酷的感觉，尤其当这个人还是你的熟人的时候。不管我们相不相信身后之事，我们都倾向于尽量柔化这种涉及终结的语言，用隐喻将死亡比喻成这，比喻成那。其实死亡就是死亡，这是它的无上权威。作为一个主持葬礼的牧师，我找到了用诗篇、音乐和怀念构成的信念，足以让我们穿越生死，看透死亡。死，只是一种状态的改变，却不是生命的终结。
