Some years ago, I was asked to compose a prayer for a campaign that was putting posters on trains on the Underground in London and the Metro in Gateshead. A bit like poems on the Underground which many of you may be familiar with, this was prayers on the Underground and was called ‘Prayers on the Move.’
After much scribbling and crossing out, I eventually settled on this:
My heart, it still keeps beating – but what for?
Show me how to measure my life in something other than years.
I have often thought about those words since then.
We live in an age obsessed with counting. Steps walked. Calories consumed. Followers gained. Posts liked. Years accumulated.
We measure success in promotions, salaries, property values and pension pots. Our wellbeing and sense of worth can feel reduced to numbers.
Easter arrives each spring like a quiet contradiction to all that counting. We arrive on Good Friday knowing that the heart of Jesus Christ has stopped beating. But it is not the end of the story. What appears as finished, is not finished. In an ending, a new beginning is found. A remarkable story of new life, hope and transformation follows.
Easter proposes a different way of measuring.
It suggests that a life is not ultimately measured in years, but in love. Not quantity, but quality. And whatever one’s personal faith, or perhaps no faith at all, it is hard to overstate how radical it is to declare that death does not have the final word, that it is not the end.
Here in Yorkshire, we pride ourselves on being practical rather than sentimental. We understand graft. Endurance. Getting on with it. We have seen that spirit embodied in the extraordinary fundraising challenges of Kevin Sinfield – quiet determination in action.
But across the county, in city centres and market towns alike, there is a neighbour checking in on an elderly friend. Volunteers running foodbanks. Grandparents providing childcare so parents can work. Teachers staying late to help children to flourish. Carers going the extra mile. These things rarely make headlines. They do not inflate statistics. Yet they are closer, perhaps, to what makes a life count.
Easter does not remove hardship. It does not magic away illness, anxiety or grief. But the Easter story helps us to reframe and renew how we consider the way we live. And how we measure it. If Christ is risen, what does that mean for the way that we live now? How do I measure my life?
You don’t need to be on the London Underground or the Metro to ask the question. You can ask it waiting for the coastliner bus, sitting in traffic on the M62, walking the moors above Haworth, or at your kitchen table anywhere from Sheffield to Whitby.
And it becomes particularly urgent when we think about the end of life.
I do not want anyone to die in pain. But nor do I want those who are poor, elderly or vulnerable to feel that they have become a burden, faced with agonising choices because proper care isn’t available. If we are serious about measuring life in love rather than years, then the answer is not to hasten death but to deepen care.
Better palliative care is what we need.
Before I was ordained in the Church, I worked at St Christopher’s Hospice, founded by Dame Cicely Saunders and discovered that hospices are not simply places where you go to die. They are places where you go to live – until the day you die. They are shaped by a commitment to accompany one another through life, knowing that each day is a precious gift.
At St Christopher’s, the day began with three rounds on each ward. First came the nurses with the drugs trolley, bringing the medication that eased pain. Then the priest, offering Holy Communion, prayer and the consolation of the gospel. Then – more modestly – I followed with the tea trolley.
All were needed. Each played a part in a healing environment that recognised the whole person: body, mind and spirit.
That experience has shaped my ministry ever since. Autonomy, for all its importance, is not the whole story. We belong with and for one another.
If Easter tells us anything, it is that human dignity does not diminish with frailty. A life is not valuable because it is productive, independent or long. It is valuable because it is.
As Dame Cicely Saunders put it:
“You matter because you are, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but to live until you die.”
That, perhaps, is the truest measure of all.
See the article in the Yorkshire Post.
