BBC Radio 4 2016-02-17

BBC Radio 4 2016-02-17

Good morning. Last night the General Synod of the Church of England passed a motion calling on all parishes to encourage people to give blood and to register as organ donors. Those who put the motion forward were well aware how difficult it is after a traumatic death for relatives to give permission for organs to be used unless the deceased has already registered as a donor.

Some years ago I was teaching a Masters’ Course on Contemporary Spirituality. A student chose as the subject for her dissertation ‘the spirituality of blood donation’. She had been a donor herself for many years and wanted to find out what motivated other people to go to the time and trouble of donating blood. After a series of interviews with fellow donors she discovered that many of them did so out of a strong sense of altruism – no surprise there, perhaps – but that they also felt that by doing so they had an almost mystical experience, a sense of unity with their unknown recipient which they found profoundly moving and humbling. She suggested that blood donation should be seen as a form of secular spirituality, something which anyone could do, whatever their beliefs, and which could transform their life.

There is nothing more intimate than blood, nothing more essential to life than the organs which maintain us. No wonder blood is regarded as sacred. That sacredness can work both ways; either to prevent us from sharing our blood or encouraging us to do so. Blood donation has helped us discover blood as the great leveller. It has groups of its own which mix or don’t mix with others and the rare groups are particularly needed, but they don’t signify any special merit – there is no aristocracy in blood, no real blue blood. it is a scientific miracle that we can exchange blood and organs. I remember seeing a little girl on the BBC programmes about Great Ormond Street who had received new lungs from a donor who had died in an accident. She was touchingly aware of the gift she had been given, and determined to live her life to the full. In some strange and I have to use the word mystical again –she felt she was responsible for carrying part of the donor’s life onwards.

I find in this experience confirmation of the insight of faith that humanity is essentially one; beyond race and ethnicity. The Christian faith takes this insight to extremes: our worship centres on our mystical reception of the Body and Blood of Christ. Sharing his Body makes us one with each other: Holy Communion. In the end we are either atomised individuals who do not connect with one another, and can only compete or compel each other; or we are linked in our very being, living each other’s life, dying each other’s death. That is what my faith affirms and what those who give blood discover for themselves.