Remembering Tomorrow

Today is Armistice Day, one of a number of opportunities to do something vitally important to preserving a hopeful tomorrow - remembering yesterday.

This is one of the days when I hope that the entire blogosphere will write about the same thing, because to me, this is so important. 

Anamnesis, that whole notion of memory, is one of the fundamental heartbeats of sacramental Christianity. It is that moment, during the Prayer of Consecration when we remember the great act of sacrifice made by Jesus Christ for us. Christian Anamnesis shares much with the Jewish notion of Yad Vashem, and is placed before us in our thoughts today, and this week. 

Remembering, that means by which we re-assemble [re-member] something from our past is perhaps the best way of learning how to live in the future. Today, of course, we remember a specific historical event, that being the end of the Great War in 1918. Sunday sees the broader Remembrance Sunday, when we are called as a nation, to re-member those young men and women whose lives were taken from them in the worst of circumstances, and for a cause not of their choosing. Last week, we had the spiritual component to all of this when we remembered the faithful departed on All Souls Day. 

I once heard it said that all this remembering should reach a natural conclusion and that we should perhaps draw an end to the practice. It was suggested that we should do that when the last survivor of the Second World War succumbs to death. It is easy to forget that our "war dead" is a community that almost daily increases. Last Sunday, among the list of those who had died in our community, I read out the considerable list of more young men and women who have died for their country during 2011. A new name has been added even since Sunday. 

The simple fact behind all of this is that the names we remember are those who did not choose death. They did not choose war. They just agreed to serve. Added to the list of our war heroes, we must also remember the people who died away from the front-line - those at home bombed in their beds, the countless millions of the Shoah genocide (Jews, Roma, Jehovah Witnesses, those with learning difficulties and physical disablements and so many others), those who died servicing the machines of war, those who patrolled our streets at home, those women who died in the factories that supplied the front-line, those who died of war-related symptoms many years after the ceasefire, family members who died of heartbreak in the wake of losing their life's love - countless myriad millions of people who did not choose death. 

Half of today is about remembering those who died on our behalf. They died for you. They died for me. They died for our children. The other half is to remember tomorrow - that fateful day when we can stop choosing war over compassion and generosity, when we give instead of take, when we can dream of waking  to a day where no-one will die violently at the hands of another human being. 

They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

When you go home tell them of us, and say for your tomorrow we gave our today

Remembering 9/11

The answer is: in a carpet shop in Staines, UK. 

The question has been posed on at least three media forums this week - the 'where were you when ...'. A man called Barry (whom I had not met before and not seen since, as I was only in Staines for the day), came into the shop to tell us all that two planes had flown into the World Trade Centre. Our response was in the perhaps understandable vein - "don't be stupid". People just didn't do things like that. 

But they did. 

By the time I had driven from Staines back to Crawley, the Towers has fallen on top of the rescue services and had vapourised many hundreds of innocent people. In the aftermath, a mere ten percent of the bodies were recovered. Oddly, at the time, the terrorist attack on New York's financial heart was too great to take in so, so I received the images like so many Schwarzenegger films. I took it in a little and never really absorbed it. The image above was the first of the hours of news-fed imagery that I saw of the terrible events unfolding. 

As a decade turns fully, I find myself more affected by the event than I did on the day itself. 9/11 did change the world and many many thousands of people have died in its wake, with declarations of war, their reprisals, and the ripple-effects that accompany them. The planes that were flown full speed into the WTC are the same as pass by my house now, so close to my home and my children. I have found myself wondering what must have passed as thought for the poor souls unto whose windows those planes were directed. Then there were those who, so desperate as they were, threw themselves over a hundred stories to their deaths - falling for countless seconds, seeing their end approach them at terminal velocity. 

So many innocent people. So many innocent rescuers caught up and killed by their duty and their love for their fellow humans. So many families left to grieve. 

I once stood at the foot of one of the Towers and looked up. They touched heaven, I thought. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the day when the world turned differently. It seems that Bin Laden did his work well as it is quite clear to me that this catastrophe was merely the Overture. Ours is, in many ways, a frightened and suspicious world where people's visible differences are cause for concern. Ours is a world where anything is now possible - even terrible and audacious things. Without doubt, ours is a more violent world where the near-three thousand deaths of 9/11 will eventually (if not already) seem small by comparison with the continuing deaths that happen in the name of the events all those years ago.

I pray earnestly that we can take the example of the fire-fighters, the ambulance crews, the sole chaplain, the passers-by - and remember that even in the darkest of moments, light can be found. It is the light that will, in the annals of history, be the remarkable story to tell. 

May God bless those who died on that darkest of days, or in the days that followed. I pray for their families too, for whom the next few hours may be among the worst - again. Amen

What Did You Do Today?

As a man of 38 years of age, the World Wars are part of my history, the subject of pages in books. For reasons that I can't fully grasp, the events that cause us all to remember today are now a part of my present for the first time.

At 11 o'clock I was with my family, in a public place, where we all observed the two-minute silence. For me it was the right place to be with the right people - my family; my loved ones. I held my daughter tight as I gave thanks to countless lost youngsters for the sacrifice upon which my freedom and my family are now built. 

I pondered those youngsters who, like my great-granadad, went over the top at the Somme. I am probably twice the age that they were then. I remember war films where the actors  portrayed war heroes as rugged men who even now seem older than me - but I am not convinced. The lads who today would be the hoodies that so many deride were the kids who were given a gun and a duty to defend something. They were scared, fighting against other youngsters who were scared too. Many had left girlfriends behind, and many families that should have found life like mine has were never given that chance. Babies that should have been born to happy couples were never concieved; futures evapourated in the squalor and mud of a field.

I looked at my brown-eyed girls today and dedicated that very moment to the men and women whose lost lives guaranteed mine, whose own futures were sacrificed that my own family had that gift. I realised in that moment too that I had a price to pay - and that was to ensure that as far as I could, the generation of little ones among whom my children number remember too. I pray that wars may cease, that the lessons of countless millions of needless deaths be learned, that war be something only a history teacher should teach. 

Always remember and never forget - that is our job. That is our price and our children's price, to acknowledge what you did today and know that it came at a great cost.

In Remembrance

"When you see that old man walking a little bent, just think he was once a proud young matloe [the nickname for a sailor] swinging along, head held high. When you sit next to him in church and see tears in his eyes when he sings “oh hear us when we pray to thee, for those in peril on the sea” – his thoughts go out to the night he was torpedoed and still hears those cries for help – he survived, but he will always remember those cries.

The man down the road who tells you about his army days ay “Cassino” and the day he went back to the scene of the “battle” [otherwise known as the Battle of Rome, 1944] many years later – he remembers the shattered monastery rebuilt, how lovely it looks, how peaceful; now the organ playing; a place for prayer and outside just the song of the birds. He looks around at the hills and sees the Polish cemetery now so serene and peaceful and then he goes down the hill and sees the German cemetery – he says a prayer for them. They were only lads like himself doing their duty for their country. Then on to the British and Commonwealth cemetery where he sees a headstone that bears a name he knows. He stops to says ‘hello’ and on and on to see many more names and thinks what a lovely cemetery this is, we have done these boys proud – but with tears in his eyes – he thinks of his son and daughter, his grandchildren and then of the families of those boys and what might have been.

Perhaps, when you are walking the dog near that old airfield, you saw a man standing looking at the old ‘dispersal bay’ and then towards the old billets, now derelict. He thinks to himself ‘that was once my home’; he thinks of the good times and the sad times and of the empty beds (usually seven); he looks towards the control tower and can still hear the WAAFs voice calling them home. Now his eyes look to the skies, he is thinking of his old “Lanc” can hear the sound of the Merlins and a feeling of tense fear and excitement runs though his body – he is now on his way to Germany and now back again, sitting down to hot tea, egg and bacon. But he thinks of the last night he saw the dispersal bay – the night he lost six of his best friends. The target was Karlsruhe. One moment they were a crew – a team – and then fate stepped in and the Lancaster was just a ball of fire hurtling earthwards. He still can’t believe how, with his parachute still intact, he was thrown into the air. He is now thinking how lucky he was to be a P.O.W. as now he can come back and look at the old airfield, but now his thoughts go back again to Germany and the boys in that row of graves, and although he had known them only a short time, what a privilege it was to claim them as friends.

Let’s also think of the S.O.E. agents [Special Operations Executive], Odette, Violette Szabo and many more, the Special Duties Squadrons that took them into enemy territory. Theirs was a very silent war and so often forgotten.

As we remember of servicemen let’s not forget the man down the road. When asked what he did, he says “well, I was a firemen”: he didn’t tell you of the days and nights he spent away from home, fire-fighting in London, Portsmouth, Coventry etc. – the smell of death, the bombs still falling; the same goes for so many more unsung heroes who gave so much – the police, ARP, Home Guard, WVS, nurses, doctors, ambulance crews, Salvation Army, Church Army, the clergy, all transport workers, munitions, parachute and clothing workers, the Land Army and so many more. Let us also not forget the brave Merchant Seamen, the evacuees and those who took them in – so many brave people, so many more names. Not forgetting the people who were bombed out of their homes but still kept cheerful, the people who took them in, the refugees from Europe.

At remembrance time let us think of those men and women of all wars, past and present, the people maimed by war and still suffering to this day. Think of the widows and families, especially those too old to visit the graves of their loved ones. Also think of those people who work for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who tend those graves so lovingly.

So, when some old “codger” takes a little longer to get on the bus, or pack his trolley in the supermarket, let’s not say, “come on granny or grandad”, but think: these were the same men and women who, when their country called said ‘here we are!’

...instead let us say “thank you, granny and grandad”

 This piece was written in the 1980s by Ricky Dyson and his wife Mavis. Ricky was a rear-gunner on the Lancaster Bombers during the Second World War, and was one of a very few who survived. He was decorated with the George Cross for his bravery. Ricky died some time after writing this piece, though Mavis is still a member of our church family. Ricky was a true hero of the War, and I dedicate this post to him, his friends, and all the fallen in our World Wars.

Anamnesis

This is my article for my forthcoming Parish Magazine - placed here so I don't have to write it twice! 

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November is a month most associated with a key Christian behaviour—remembrance [anamnesis / ἀνάμνησις].

As many of you may know, I have just returned from a two week Seminar at the International Centre for Holocaust Studies based in Jerusalem. The school forms part of the Yad Vashem institute which was created by legal decree in the 1950s, and its name is taken from Isaiah 56:5: ‘I will give, in my house and within my walls, a memory and a name’   -   יד ושמ  - and as it suggests, is an establishment entrusted with the responsibility and task of recovering and commemorating the identities of most of the six-million Jewish victims of the Holocaust/Shoah.

This month will manifest its most famous tradition of ‘anamnesis’ in Britain — Remembrance Day when of course we remember yet more victims of conflicts throughout our recent history. We will pause once or maybe more times for a minute or two to remember those who died to assure us of a freedom that we enjoy in our day, closing that moment with the words ‘we will remember them’.

A key part (and indeed a necessary part) of the great prayer of consecration which we pray during our Eucharist services at various times during every week is the Anamnesis—’we remember his dying and rising in glory…’ - the moment when we as Christians connect with the narrative of love and sacrifice embodied by Our Lord.

In all of these things we acknowledge that we are connected with a heritage, a past that has helped form us and continues to form us in the present. Our world is one of hurried progress, or a striving always to move forwards—and of course this is right and proper in its own way—but it is for nothing if we don’t remember. To fail to remember, to connect. renders us all as accidents in time and space, and as God’s People we are certainly not that. During the course of this month we will also draw to the end of another Liturgical / Church year and we wish ourselves ‘Happy New Year’ on Advent Sunday, maybe even opening a door on a calendar. It is right to take stock of the challenges and successes of the year that draws to its close so that we are best prepared for the year that opens out before us. We can pray for lost loved ones, celebrate our new arrivals, give thanks for many blessings and ponder the lessons learned from situations that didn’t go as we might have chosen. May God bless you all this month as we begin to prepare once again to remember the great moment of the Incarnation, itself a precious moment amid the chaos of daily life, itself connecting past with present so that all people may have a future.

Fr David

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NB - I can manage to write like a proper vicar when I have to!