Remembrance Sunday Reflections 2019

We honour the fallen by rejecting all forms of violence, opposing expressions of nationalism and striving to live as one world - God's world.

On Armistice Day, 101 years ago tomorrow, crowds poured out into the street of our villages, towns and cities to celebrate victory, confident that good had triumphed over evil once and for all. Peace had “broken out”. “It will never happen again,” they said. Those who had opposed going to war were vilified, for it had now been justified. But amid all that partying, singing and dancing, there were other stories. The young Vera Brittain, who had been a nurse in France and herself wounded, had lost her fiancé, two close male friends and her only brother. 

As she walked away from the gates of Buckingham Palace can you imagine the questions and the torment in her mind? Trying to justify the suffering and sacrifice. Would she feel like dancing ever again? There were others too, many of whom had no body to bury. I’m sure, however, that even they were at least glad it was over, and that no more young lives would be lost. I have read some really sad stories of people who did not hear the news of the death in the last days of the war of their loved ones until after the armistice – their rejoicing was shattered weeks later.  And of course, there were those, men and women, who were poisoned in the battlefield or in the munitions factories who died years after.  We all know that a good deal of the pain was suppressed, often at personal cost to the minds of the survivors. PTSD was simply called “shell shock”

People did gradually make some semblance of sense out of the chaos of those celebrations; the gay abandonment to singing and dancing subsided and became more realistic as the national cost was revealed. The country was bankrupt of course, people’s homes had been destroyed, inflation soared, but life had to return soon to normality and productivity. 

It was a country that was discontented.  Extreme class division was more apparent. Stanley Baldwin, later to become Prime Minister, declared that the government was “comprised of hard-faced men who had done well out of the war”. Coal mining had been nationalised during the war, but was then handed back to the ruthless private owners to try to suppress the social expectations that had been rising before the war. Soldiers returning home needed jobs, so women had to return to menial work, even though those over 30 and with property had now been emancipated. 

But Lloyd George, sensing opportunities, declared that, “the nation is now in a molten state. We cannot return to the old ways, the old abuses, the old stupidities. The Great War,” he said, “was like a star shell flashing over the land and illuminating the country, showing up the deep dark places. We have seen these deep dark places and we intend to put them right.” 

Peace? Freedom? Certainly not for many, possibly not for most people. 

And also at the international table, Lloyd George again clashed with European leaders arguing that a true victory for good should not inflict penalties on Germany. The harsh option, wanted by so many other national leaders, would, he prophesied, lead to “the whole thing again in 25 years at three times the cost”. Need I say more? It was only 21 years later it all happened again. What an utter waste of life.

So, what are we doing today – Remembrance Sunday? Are we in danger, in our cosy part of the world, of perpetrating the myth that peace was won on Armistice Day.

Let’s pause to think. On this day just over a century ago there was a celebration of a unbridled nationalistic victory of good over evil. We “won the war” after all! Germany lost, they capitulated. 

But, in my opinion, there is no place for nationalistic triumphalism today. I think history has been re-written to declare the end of the war as a triumph of one lesser , though absolutely horrendous, evil, over a greater evil, not of a national victory. Most people are more aware than ever of our duty and obligations to each other on this fragile planet. We are interdependent on every other nation. Borders, as was apparent after the first world war, are all man-made. The air, the water and all resources on God’s earth do not belong to any one nation. While there is always a time and a place for celebrating our national culture and traditions, and always will be, today is not a time for echoing triumphalism and dominance.

Then, in the decade after WW1 many memorials included the words, “the supreme sacrifice”. When Jesus made The Supreme Sacrifice, he provided a solution, once and for all, to all the evil that ever was and ever will be – he offered eternal and real peace. The war did not do that. It did not provide a solution to the wrongs of this world; indeed, as I have said, there was more discontent and further suffering to come. As the years passed, those words were carved fewer times on memorials as people realised the folly. Yes, the lives were “sacrificed” for the cause, often in many hopeless and speculative assaults on the enemy, to gain inches of territory, mud, and sometimes simply to soak up enemy fire. We hear many tales of individual bravery, putting one’s own life at risk for the safety of another and indeed sometimes sacrificing one’s own life. But, history now tells us as we gaze upon row upon row of white gravestones, it was an horrendous waste of life and the peace won was only a temporary cessation of hostility. The potential of many lives went unfulfilled. It was selfless and often brave for the sake of our country, but, as a sacrifice, it did not achieve God’s peace. 

Then the word “Remembrance” means re-membering, putting the members together again, making sense of things. I don’t know how to do that. I can’t make sense of it. We can’t put back together bodies blown apart and lives wrecked. The poems of Wilfred Owen try despairingly to make sense of the reality of war and fail. Only our Lord can really re-member the dead.

And “Com-memorating” – remembering together, sharing a memory of the past together. How do we do that? We are getting to the stage of losing the living tangible connections, even to the second world war. With the archive of material, we now have, we can get only a glimpse of what it was like. 

Generations today can only grieve over what we imagine it might have been like, and our imaginations fall short, so I’m not sure that we can honestly claim the word “com-memoration” any more. Maybe that’s just semantics, but we mustn’t pretend we can know what it was like. 

And I fear the proliferation of poppy art installations can easily become a nicely sanitised, sentimental or emotional act and mask the need of a really sincere commitment to honour each and every individual person who has died in all conflicts and really change our ways.

I think that’s a good word, honour. My view is that our responsibility as Christian people is to honour the past as we stand in silence today as a world community, not as a nation that won a war, but as a wider world of sane, humanitarian people, in solidarity against any form of repression, domination and exploitation by big strong nations over smaller weaker countries, military or economic, against any form of war. So how do we best honour the lives that have been lost?

We, by influencing our leaders, must solve the dichotomy of this dualistic world - where a few rich nations call the tune over world trade. And the same select nations hold arsenals of nuclear weapons, using the fear of military power to intimidate and suppress. Mr Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has said this last week that we should abandon all nuclear weapons. Posturing and threatening violence does a real disservice to those who have died in wars. It perpetrates the myth that military might can achieve peace. We see time and time again how arms’ sales dictate political policies, actually causing famine and suffering – that’s obscene. Current politics is all self-fulfilling and just repeats the mistakes of the past. It will all keep coming around again unless we find a fair way of working as one world. As it stands there will never be real peace, the peace of God, on earth.

Our leaders are only stewards and we pray they become aware whom they serve. It is the love of God, shown by the supreme sacrifice of Jesus, that can win a real victory and achieve world peace. If we don’t believe this and act on it, we collude with the status quo. If we believe prayer works and Jesus died to bring peace, we can change the world. Not overnight, but in time. Prayer always gives us hope, because prayer will change our attitudes.

As Jesus said in today’s Gospel Reading from Luke, God is Lord of the living, not of the dead. It is in praying for and actively campaigning for peace, rejecting all forms of violence, that we genuinely honour the memory of those who have died and serve our Lord for the world today.

Malcolm Guite’s Poem about Remembrance Sunday sums it up very well…
Click here to hear it...Silence

Just tell me the truth!

In our present secular society, there is an on-going debate about real news, fake-news and the value of people’s opinions on many topics. There are many people who are crying out for the truth to be told in all situations. So, we must ask the age-old question from the times of Plato, what is truth?

It is all part of the familiar science and religion debate.

I suppose it can be reasonable to think that truth must be factually demonstrable and proven. But consider this simple picture, a roundabout. 

We all know which way to drive round a roundabout. In the UK one turns left to go around. A worm looking up at the roundabout would say, correctly, that the traffic is going anti-clockwise. However, a bird looking down on the same traffic would say, also correctly, it is going clockwise. They are both telling the truth and are factually correct. Then again, if you are not in the UK but in a country where they drive on the right, exactly the opposite is correct. So, the truth depends not only on your viewpoint, but also on your culture.

Another example is measuring a straight line drawn on paper. You would have thought that the line has a very precise length. Then one must consider the danger of parallax error. Looking at a rule, which has a finite thickness from slightly different angle will mean that the viewers all read different lengths. 

One can only state that the middle one in the accompanying image is the most accurate, not that they are actually right. Then again, particularly if your rule is metal it will expand and contract with temperature changes at a much greater rate than the line on the paper. So, how long is the line? What is the true factual length? The truth depends on your viewpoint again and on the conditions and the environment in which you currently find yourself.

Some ascertain that only science will reveal the truth about the universe and that faith is conjured up from spurious fables. As far as religion is concerned, Jesus is not alone in claiming to be “The Truth”; adherents to many faiths claim to have found enlightenment and truth.

Science is based on theories proved by observable, objective and replicable evidence published in papers. Faith relies on evidence based on immersive, subjective, personal experience and millennia of testimonies. But both have a good track record of intelligent, academic, discriminating followers.

I feel we must be very careful if we are casually dismissive of statements from science, any religion or any person’s viewpoints. We must surely not dismiss anyone’s opinion of the truth about life, its origins and meaning, whether based on scientific theory or religious faith. While no one wants to be misled by fake-news or deliberate falsehoods, and we should be discerning of the obvious scam or satirical publication, a tolerant and inclusive view of scientific facts and personal religious experience must surely be the path to human wholeness. It is neither one nor the other which holds all the answers to our present predicament.

Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”. In my view, only the two together can lead us to an understanding of the real truth about life.

Some thoughts on Mental Health Issues

Do you know anyone who suffers from a form of mental illness? Maybe anxiety, depression, or one of many serious conditions that impacts on their lifestyle. The answer is a guaranteed “yes”, whether they show it or not and whether you know it or not. About one in four people in this country is affected by some form of mental illness during a year, so we all know someone.

Because of the stigma attached to mental illness and the legacy of much casual language about it, many sufferers just cope in silence - they don’t and won’t talk about or show what is going on in their heads and in their lives. They function like anyone else, hold down often powerful, responsible jobs (e.g. Winston Churchill), they may often smile and say they are fine in public. But all this comes at a huge personal cost of fatigue, inner turmoil and sometimes difficulty with relationships. The daily struggle can result in serious collapse and sometimes, sadly, self-harm or suicide.

Let’s think for a moment, if somebody has an obvious physical disability, even if temporary, for example a broken leg, we all make allowances and sympathise. They may take longer to do something, they may need to rest more because of the effort involved in getting around, they may need help to carry out some tasks, they may have to miss out on some social activities. We don’t exacerbate the situation by taking away their crutches or by kicking the leg that is broken. They may seek help and follow a course of treatment. Some physical disabilities are only short-lived, some are life-long.

Mental illness is absolutely no different, except it is usually invisible. It is not a weakness or cry for help, any more that getting a bout of the ‘flu is. It doesn’t have an instant solution any more than does a broken leg.

Those who suffer have a real, day by day battle to function in a world that demands so much of them to smile and conform, to put on a brave face. They often live in fear that revealing their struggle will be interpreted as an inability to take responsibility, resulting in reduced prospects, and that it may damage personal relationships, because of prejudice or fear. If they do speak out, many well-meaning friends, not knowing how to respond, may suggest easy ways to “snap out of it”, emphasising the existing feelings of inadequacy.

People have campaigned for years for equality of access for the physically disabled and on gender issues. We are getting somewhere slowly. But there is a very long way to go for mental health equality. We do not seem to show the same understanding as for physical ailments when someone, through a mental health crisis, must have a day off from work, is late or fails to keep an appointment, has to leave a meeting or party early because they are fatigued, or behaves irrationally. Mental illness is as real as a physical problem.

If you suspect someone has mental health issues, be prepared to listen non-judgmentally. Be there for them, and, above all, do not give advice or pressure them to conform. They may need to be encouraged to seek good professional help to find their road to well-being. Their illness may be acute, and it may be chronic and life-long. The way may be rough and demanding. Walk with them, unconditionally, on that journey, reassuring them and supporting any self-help strategies they may have.

For further information see organisations such as Mind, Rethink and more on the internet. There is also a very good Metro article by our daughter, Frances, “Mental Health First Aid – what is it and how can I do it?” at www.metro.co.uk – just go to this link and type the title in the search box.

But Is It Art?

Introduction:

I am no great poet, but I have enjoyed writing a ditty or two over the years and have kept them in a file. To rekindle my blog I'm going to publish some of these verses just for fun.
Here's the first. It was started after visiting Tate Modern in London circa 2000 and modified in 2005. I offer it to you.

But Is It Art?

A pile of bricks upon the floor,

I heard someone ask, "But what's it for?"

When is a building merely a structure,

And art marries into architecture?

When does naked become a nude

Or flesh become erotic or rude?

No doubt art should provoke a reaction,

Celebration of creation or derivation?

Art may fall foul of stereotype,

Of pretentiousness and media hype;

I heard it said that it was frue

That all art must have a commercial value?

Sherman and Pollock hung on the wall,

McQueen and Gormley, I've seen them all,

I stood and I looked at the Bourgeois towers,

Can they compare with Van Gogh's flowers?

Who's to say that Tracey's bed

Will not be remembered when she's dead?

So, is modern art really that bad?

Or should we be asking, ' 'Who's been had?"

Then we had Starling's shed,

Some people say "It does my head

In", but I'm not sure -

Better that, than to bore.

Let's push the bounds beyond again

And avoid another cold refrain

Of all the strains that have gone before

The conflict cries out, "More, more, more!"

Just what is it to understand

The integrity of the artist's plan?

The excitement with contemporary art

Is that no one knows just where it starts …

...or finishes.

© Kevin J Wright - July 2000, revised 2005

Coming back soon

It’s almost three years since I posted a blog. Far too long. I have things in my head that need working out on paper. Watch this space...

How Old is Old?

“I don’t believe it”, conjures up the image of the grumpy old Victor Meldrew as portrayed on TV by Richard Wilson - amusing, but sadly stereotypical of the intolerant characteristics attributed to older people. Then there is Dot Cotton, a devoutly Christian lady of the East End, who drinks sherry (“I don’t drink. Just a small one then”) and clings to her anachronistic hymns, quoting from the Authorised Version of the Bible. Dot embodies all that is popularly seen as the intransigent conservatism of the elderly and the irrelevance of the traditional Church of England. 

"Old age is forever stereotyped", writes Penelope Lively, quoting Simone de Beauvoir, who pointed out decades ago that we regarded old age as "something alien, a foreign species". For an actor to be asked to act an older person still seems to involve the parody of shuffling along with a walking frame or assuming signs of dementia. The media seem to do their level best to reinforce the age-old myths about aging people.

But what does it mean to be elderly in the 21^st century? When do you become “old”? When I was younger, people who were 60 all seemed old to me, a legacy of the war partly, but now I’ve turned 60 too and I don’t feel old yet. I’m pretty fit and active physically and mentally. We are all very different and life-expectancy has increased, so the group labelled as “elderly” is now a very disparate group ranging from people in their 60s suffering illness or disabilities to extraordinary 90+ year olds who live a very active life.

Michelle Hanson wrote in The Guardian (06/10/13), “Some friends recently visited Paris, where they saw old people in restaurants with their families, drinking wine. Bliss! Here we offer tea dances and singalongs for a separate group of what seem to be rather simple-minded charity cases.”

How patronizing it is to expect us all to drop into the stereotype! I don’t wear beige and happily wear purple (see Jenny Joseph “When I am old”). The rock ‘n’ roll culture has now matured and some musicians are still rocking past seventy.

Older people are as varied in their abilities and desires as any other group, perhaps even more varied. We may easily make assumptions about what “they” might like based on our own or historic images that have been blown away in recent times with health care, longer life and more exciting opportunities. As Christians we must not perpetrate the myth that beyond a certain age everybody homogenises into a grey mass, but love and serve each person as they are and as God does.  

What is important is to get to know the older people already around us that we don’t know so well, those who have chosen not to “join in” or who seem stand-offish, those reaching the retirement age who move in, but don’t seem to want to “get involved”. Maybe they are not like us cultural, psychologically or socially. How have the needs of this group (if it is a group) changed as the years have gone by? Maybe some don’t want or need the coffee mornings, bingo and sing-along tea parties that churches and villages offer now. I for one don’t. What new things ought we to consider organising in our communities that are really relevant in the 21^st century for the active and spirited group formerly known as “the elderly”? Any ideas?

Remembrance Sunday Thoughts 2014 - Poppies and more

Remembrance Sunday Thoughts 2014

I imagine most of you have read about and perhaps seen pictures of the amazing installation of poppies round the Tower of London. Artist Tom Piper has created over eight hundred thousand ceramic poppies, representing British and Colonial troops who lost their lives in World War One. If you haven’t seen it, these are planted so that they seem to flow from a window in the Tower and round the moat; a glorious red sea that can be seen from aeroplanes flying into Heathrow. It’s impressive and a wonderful spectacle.

 However, like all good art, it has also challenged us and produced controversy and discussion. Jonathan Jones in The Guardian and Simon Jenkins, I think of The Mail, have criticised the work and, I think, they have raised some really pertinent questions we, if we claim to be Christians, may need to ask ourselves. I’m not going to answer them, just reflect on some of them and invite you to reflect too.

The poppies form an installation undoubtedly of great beauty, but Jonathan Jones suggested that, as such, it sanitises war and maybe the moat should have better been filled with barbed wire, mud and skulls, symbols of the hardship and death of the trenches, along the lines of poems by the Great War poets, like Wilfred Owen in “Dulce et Decorum Est” – he didn’t pull any punches and destroyed the lie that it is “a sweet and honorable thing to die for one’s country” (Read it here). I don’t think people would have flocked to the Tower if that had been so.

Buying and wearing a pretty poppy is such a relatively easy token, but we must not shy from the horror it represents as poppies sprouted from the soil of the battlefields; poppy seeds that had remained dormant for decades in the soil, now stinking mud, churned up by bombs and shells and tanks and weary worn boots. It was only as a result of the awfulness that we have the symbol of the beautiful poppy.

 War is not beautiful or glorious and, as we wear a pretty poppy (or indeed use our hard-won freedom to choose not to wear a poppy or to wear a white poppy), we need to be honest and recall that mud and the smell and the blood. Mr Jones questions and so should we, is the artwork a sentimental piece that just makes us feel good? Each one of those eight hundred thousand poppies represents a life brutally ended. People around the artwork have been chattering, singing and shouting. It should make us weep.

But that then poses a further question. Whom do we remember?

This artwork has one poppy for each of the British and Colonial troops who died. What about the rest of the allies, many dying far from their homes and families?

And what about this? In Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, near Arras in France, there is a new war memorial, which commemorates all those who died in Northern France in WW1 – and I mean all those who died. (Click here) There are 42 John Robertsons, but also 72 Karl Schmidts. The Germans are listed alongside the Allies all in straight alphabetical order.

If you have been watching The Passing Bells on TV, you will have seen parallel stories of lads growing up from opposing sides – their families, their lives and their loves – growing up to fight and die for their respective countries, experiencing national pride and courage, mixed with absolute terror right down to their bowels. Every German soldier and of course German civilians too, had a mother and father, and brothers and sisters, maybe a fiancée just like “our lads”, and they died doing what they were trained to believe in, just like “our lads”.

So the critics of Tom Piper’s art also wonder whether narrow nationalism has any part to play in our quest for true peace and freedom as we look to the future.  The earth’s resources know no national boundaries – God's rain falls across man made borders – and yet we seem to put great store in them. We need, in my view, to avoid pandering to those who promote political nationalistic superiority, if we believe in the future of humanity – I think they, you know who I mean, are taking advantage of a centenary groundswell of nationalism. We are all equal children of God. Perhaps this French war memorial is more appropriate these days and perhaps we should think about being more generous than remembering only our own dead. What do you think?

I wrestle with all this. I wrestle with the rightness of war every year and sometimes I weep. I recognise that war is regarded sometimes as being the only remaining option in the face of evil, but it is surely never right. It is simply the least bad option. Even Winston Churchill is reputed to have said, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”.

Although Jesus got angry at times, he said to Peter to put down his sword in the garden of Gethsemane, when the heavily armed soldiers came to arrest him. Jesus then went on to win the greatest ever victory over the greatest ever evil. If we claim to be Christians, what does this teach us about the road we must take? It may be counter-cultural. It may lead us to question openly some of the behaviours expected of us around this time of year. We may have to be the ones bold enough to be the ones who go the extra mile to achieve tolerance and peace; tolerance that is not just putting up with others, but complete acceptance of them and their differences; non-judgmental generosity to their needs, whatever their culture and religion. And Christ's peace is a peace that is not only an absence of war, but absolute confidence and trust in others. As with so many things, it starts with a commitment to prayer for ourselves and above all prayer for our political leaders for right decisions, for that peace can only be achieved with God's help. It is said that charity starts at home, so too do tolerance and peace.

Until we find that true peace, then every life lost in war has been in vain and the artwork of poppies is a hollow gesture, because nothing has changed, and wearing a poppy is pointless. We have a responsibility to those who have died in war not to forget. If we have taken part in an Act of Remembrance it is incomplete without a genuine Act of Commitment for a better future.