'The love which nature requireth': November, a month for churchyards
Engravings on the wall of the cave system could be between 241,000 and 335,000 years-old, and consist of geometric shapes on surfaces that appear to have been smoothed in preparation for a pointed or sharp object to make the markings.
Intentional designs of this kind that communicate a ‘message’ are considered to be a significant cognitive leap in human evolution, and it is seen here for the first time in small-brained human relatives.
The recent discovery of such burial customs amongst our distant ancestors is suggestive of how care for the dead is 'natural' to our species. Indeed, it is such natural duties which Hooker first emphasises in his discussion of the Prayer Book burial rite:
The end of funerall duties is first to show that love towardes the partie deceased which nature requireth ... (LEP V.75.1).
These natural duties also find expression in the churchyard, a place set apart for the mortal remains of those we have loved and cherished in our families and communities to be honoured and respected. The customs associated with the churchyard similarly embody these natural duties: headstones bearing the name of the deceased, perhaps referring to them as a beloved spouse and parent, and noting the years of their earthly sojourn; flowers left at the grave on anniversaries, a holly wreath at Christmas; and the quietness of the churchyard, a place for reverence.
That such customs are natural can face disapproval from certain theological tendencies. Where is the distinctively Christian hope of resurrection? Do such customs, precisely because they are natural, not speak of a generic view of death and the afterlife, undermining the Christian proclamation?
Grace, however, does not destroy nature. It gathers up nature, heals nature, and draws nature into participation with the Triune God. To again quote Hooker:
nature hath need of grace, whereunto I hope, we are not opposite, by holding that grace hath use of nature (III.8.6).
The natural loves, relationships, emotions, lives, and the very mortality signified by the churchyard are that which is gathered up in the resurrection. The love "which nature requireth" for the departed, expressed in care for the grave and marked by a headstone, with flowers and Christmas wreaths commemorating the departed, the respectful silence of the churchyard, the visits to a loved one's grave: these are not to be dismissed as somehow irrelevant to the Church's resurrection faith, for they are signs of that which is caught up in the resurrection
Without such mortal life, there is no resurrection, no clothing of mortality with immortality. Grace alone without nature would not be resurrection but a disembodied spiritual abstraction, remote and disconnected from our existence as created, embodied beings - the very existence to which the churchyard, and its love "which nature requireth", is witness and sign.
In his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, William Wordsworth said of the churchyard:
The encircling ground, in native turf arrayed,
Is now by solemn consecration given
To social interests, and to favouring Heaven.
Social interests and heaven, nature and grace. Our natural duties and emotions in the churchyard are not to be dismissed as only natural religion (and Hooker, followed by a succession of Anglican divines, including Taylor, would tell us that natural religion is inherent to Christianity): they are that which is gathered up in the hope of the resurrection, that which is fulfilled in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
On November days, walking through the churchyard, the sun low in the sky, the leaves falling, as we read the headstones marking the resting place of the departed, and our thoughts turn to the earthly loves and griefs of these lives, we are walking amidst the very stuff of resurrection.
(The photograph is of the churchyard of The Middle Church in Jeremy Taylor country, November 2023.)
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