A Thought about Charlie.

Little Charlie Gard is dead. The story that has captured the hearts of people in Britain, and possibly around the world, has reached its probably inevitable conclusion.

 Image ©BBC

You know, I’ve heard it said by adherents of several spiritual traditions – and it’s a claim which finds much favour with me – that we come into these bodies and live a life in order to learn something. And so you might ask what the point could possibly be of coming into a life which is destined to be a mere eleven months long, much of which is to be spent lying in a hospital bed on life support while the poor parents suffer.

I can’t answer that and I don’t believe anybody else can, but maybe Charlie’s role this time around wasn’t to learn something, but to teach something. Maybe Charlie was no less than a little messiah. He had the eyes of one.

And if you think I’m trivialising this issue – or, even worse, callously taking the opportunity to make a blog post – you’re very wrong. Don’t you think his story has brought a lump to my throat? Do you imagine that I don’t feel the most intense sympathy for his parents? It has and I do. I’m just honestly musing on whether there might be some sense to be made of it.