The poet Keats described autumn as the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Mists in the mountains can be beautiful and atmospheric. We enjoy the rich colours of autumn leaves as well as the richness of the fruits in this season.
But all this richness and colour is a last flourishing, a prelude to the decay of winter that is almost upon us. The fading of the light as the days shorten adds to this feeling of things coming to an end. It is also reflected in our liturgical calendar. At the beginning of November we have the Commemoration of All Souls, when we recall before God our loved ones, especially those who have died in the past year. The month closes with Advent, when we reflect on "the last things". Before then is Remembrance Sunday. It will be especially poignant this year as, for the first time, there will be no-one alive who fought in the 1914-18 war. A whole generation has gone.
What does that word "gone" mean? As Christians, the first thing to say is that they really have gone. Our faith does not teach us to deny the fact of death - we have the Cross to remind us that we all have to die one day. Nor does the Bible teach a belief in an immortal soul that "passes over" unscathed. That is a pagan Greek idea. The New Testament, on the other hand, speaks of resurrection. "For as in Adam [our humanity] all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor 15:22). This presumably refers to our whole self, i.e. body and soul. A few verses later on St Paul calls this a mystery, and so it is. We should not speculate on the details but we should approach this mystery in faith.
In Romans 8:38f, St Paul writes "I am sure that neither death, nor life...shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord". We are all held together in this way but this emphatically does not mean that attempts to communicate with the dead have any place in Christian practice. I once heard a lecture on death and resurrection by the eminent German Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann. He said that God has not finished with us when we die. (He also rejected reincarnation with a neat phrase: "Gott clont nicht"!) He talked of an ongoing journey towards the fulfilment of God's promises to us. To me, this suggests we can properly pray for the departed, as we did while they were alive. This is what we do at All Souls, commending our loved ones to God's care.
Further than that it is probably neither wise nor faithful to go. But, knowing God as we do in Jesus Christ, it should be enough.
Peter