Our mortality

This recent story struck me as a reminder of our mortality. I came across it because the 16 year old victim shares the name of a past Puritan who I like to research. The report here says

The tragedy that took the life of a young baseball catcher from Garfield, N.J. on Friday may not have been preventable no matter what kind of protective gear he was wearing, doctors and sports equipment experts agreed Monday.

Thomas Adams probably succumbed to commotio cordis, a sudden, usually fatal condition that occurs when a blow to the chest wall at a specific point between beats disrupts the electrical activity in the heart, medical experts said. The heart stops beating and instead just shakes and quivers.

"We know it’s underreported because there is no mandatory reporting," said Dr Barry Maron, a commotio cardis expert with the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, which keeps the registry. "We just don’t know how much." Read the full story at northjersey.com.

Woody Allen

Woody Allen has a new film so there was an interview in the Times yesterday. As ever, Allen comes over as a cautiously optimistic humanist. He knows we can't escape the fact of death and so copes with the idea as best he can, distancing it for the idea of judgement. When tackled about his morality he offers no defence for his actions but clearly feels his conscience has been squared. The following quotations struck me.

"God forbid the people who have bad luck, or even neutral luck, because even the luckiest, the most beautiful and brilliant, what have they got? A minuscule, meaningless life span in the grand scheme of things."

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"Ageing, death: these things intrude upon you. When you get out of bed you find, ‘Oh God my back hurts’ and ‘Oh God I’ve got a pain in the back of my neck’. You start to feel your age: it finds you. You’re aware of death your whole life, constantly sweeping it under the rug and eventually it happens — you just have to hope as painlessly as possible. I once said in a movie that the nicest thing you could wish for is to say goodnight to your loved one, say ‘We’ll go to the museum tomorrow’, then never wake up again."

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"You reach a certain age and you come to the conclusion that greatness is not in you. You aspired to greatness when you were younger. but either through lack of industry or lack of discipline or simply lack of genius you didn’t achieve greatness. The years go by and you realise: ‘I’m this mid-level guy.’ I did the best I could.
"It’s not hard to accept. I didn’t compromise or sell out, but I’ve never achieved what I hoped to."

Alan Coren

I hear that the broadcaster, writer and humorist Alan Coren died just over a week ago. He was 69. See here.

One of his passions in life was putting Cricklewood, where he lived for many years, on the map. Being practically in Cricklewood here that seemed a good idea to me.

Early in my ministry I did quite a bit of door to door work and one day I doorstepped Mr Coren who was in his dressing gown and about to have a bath I guess. Less familiar to me then I still recognised him as someone I had seen on Call My Bluff (TV quiz) and elsewhere - it happens from time to time. We exchanged only a few words and was quite friendly. I don't know if there were any gospel influences in his life. I'm certainly not aware of any profession of faith.

It is a reminder of how quickly time passes, how soon people are in their graves and how few are our opportunities of reaching people. We need to work now, to sow our seed while we can.

Life is short

This is an advert I know but I just think it's so clever. It lasts 59 secs.