[Propertalk] Remembrance Sunday 2017 Reflection

[Allison Dean]

Greetings everyone.

I don't post much anymore but today we have a live service in the hospital
chapel with an Act of Remembrance to start it all off (complete with the
sounds of Big Ben chiming at 11:00 a.m.).  This reflection is too late to
use for many people but is offered with many thanks for the inspiration
given by all of you every week.  The idea for it came from a reflection by
Stephen Cherry several years ago.  Hoping all goes well with each of you
wherever you are this day.

Allison

Allison Cline-Dean,
Lead Chaplain,
Colchester General University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Colchester, Essex, UK

Remembrance Sunday 2017


‘For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven.’
(Ecclesiastes 3.1)


Today it is time of remembrance, recalling different aspects of conflict
during two minutes of silence!  It brings young and old together in a way
that no other day can.  What ran through your mind during that two minutes
of silence?  Memories of long-deceased relatives whose pictures hung on
walls as you were growing up?  Stories about aunts and uncles, grandparents
who served in the war or were shared with you as you grew up?  Friends and
family who have served in the more modern conflicts?  Many younger people
will have stretched their imaginations to try to grasp what those people
must be feeling. However, I believe that most people will be praying that
as time rolls forwards human beings will find ways of resolving their
differences and repelling aggressors which do not involve warfare.


I have no personal memories of wartime.  My parents did not serve either –
both were too young.  However my Uncle Ron was a rear gunner with the
Canadian contingent of the RAF in WW2 and lived to tell the tale – but he
spoke of that experience only once.  That was when my then 12 year old son,
Bayden, asked him about flying during the war.  What my Uncle Ron spoke of
was not of the horrors but of the courage and bravery of those with whom he
served as they ran to their planes when the sirens sounded.  That story
turned my son into a WW2 history buff with a special interest in military
aircraft.


My Uncle Dave also was reticent in speaking of his war-time experiences.  He
started sharing one evening when Bayden and I were with my parents visiting
my aunt and uncle one Canadian Thanksgiving Sunday.  There was a WW2
Hollywood movie on that depicted the march of the Canadian troops through a
Dutch village and my uncle said “That’s not what happened!”.  He had been
there as well as taken part in the liberation of Holland and a POW camp.  He
spoke of seeing skeletal people as the POW camp was liberated and the
stench of the smoke from the gas chambers they smelled from five miles away.
It took many years for Uncle Dave to be able to return to Holland and he
did so three times in the last 10 years of his life courtesy the Canadian
Veterans tours.  He recounted how he would be mobbed by the Dutch people
and thanked although he did not know any of them.



My paternal grandfather served in WW1 and he never spoke of his experiences.
It seems it was quite common for veterans not to speak of their experiences.
My uncles rarely spoke of what they had done, nor did the veterans whom I
served in the long-term care home in Canada.  Those who were not severely
cognitively impaired said it was too painful.  One who was living with
dementia had a memory triggered when I said that I had visited the Juno
Beach Museum in Normandy.  He said he come ashore at Juno Beach where for
three days he picked up bodies of dead soldiers even though he was not
trained to do so – he never spoke of it again and he shook as he recounted
the experience.  And then there was Annie, a British war bride whose
cognitive impairment was so severe that she was not able to speak yet
whenever it thundered, she would scream and try to dive under a bed.  It
was not until I conducted her funeral that her daughter told the story of
how her mother was also a British veteran.  Annie was assigned to  stand on
a designated London rooftop and when she saw the enemy bombers, sound the
air raid siren and then scramble to safety herself.  Powerful,
heart-rending stories and they continue with past conflicts in the Gulf,
Bosnia, Cypress, Iraq, Afghanistan.


The stories continue in the lives of Neil, Chris, Stephen, Phillip, and
Cole, a few of the military padres with whom I studied in Cardiff as they
returned from tours of duty in Afghanistan.  They had already served in
Bosnia and Iraq.  We could see how what they had seen and experienced had
changed them but they only ever gave us the barest of details and a bit of
humour e.g. what it was like to fly in a military aircraft in full gear,
wearing a helmet – it felt like one was a bobble head.  They spoke of what
it was like to conduct Prayers of Commendation after death and other
rituals while bombs were falling around them.  They shared the dilemma they
faced if their driver was shot dead in an ambush.  Did they grab a weapon
and shoot to defend themselves because British and Canadian padres are not
supposed to bear arms.


Silence for many of our veterans, both older and younger, is the only way
to honour the memories and those who have died in war, both civilian and
military.  Stephen Cherry writes:


Silence was the only language that could somehow do justice to the feeling,
the memory, and the imagination.

So silence *is *the true language of remembrance. But there are two kinds
of silence.


One is because no one wants to communicate. This is the frosty, thick,
awkward, hostile, silence which is an outward expression of irreconcilable
hostility.  ‘She isn’t talking to me – big time.’ Such silence is a form of
shouting. And it is often a prelude to violence. The guns and bombs begin
only after the talking has stopped.


The other sort of silence is calm and mutual, it is the recognition that
what matters is so much more than we can ever say that we might as well
honour that fact by shutting up for a bit.


The silence of Armistice Day – the silence of Remembrance Sunday - is this
sort of silence. It is the recognition that in order to do justice to what
has happened, to do justice to the cost of war – its sacrifice and shame -
we do not need to tell another story or sing another song. Rather we need
to be silent together. We need to recognise that sometimes the most
important thing we can do is hold our tongue.

Have you noticed this with war veterans?  The importance thing is not the
war stories they tell but the war stories they *don’t* tell: the memories
that are unspeakable, the experiences which can’t or shouldn’t be told.


 The memories and the silence are what stay with us.  In Canada our
Remembrance Day parades are silent – there is no clapping and people are
not lined up ten deep.  It’s not a national holiday anymore so most people
are at work but we all observe two minutes silence when everything stops.  The
one memory I have of my first Remembrance Sunday here in the UK was in 2009
when Alastair and I spent a two week vacation here in November of that year.
We came out of Westminster Abbey after the Remembrance Sunday service and
heard clapping, loud clapping and people lining the streets ten deep as
soldiers and veterans marched passed them.  It was a powerful and emotional
moment that reached deep into my soul, a recognition of just what these men
and women have sacrificed in the way in body, mind, spirit, friends and
familial relations as they strive to find ways to bring peace to our world,
not just for ourselves but for all people on earth.  Listening to the
clapping brought awe, sadness as well as a deep hope that one day there
will be peace.  We pray for peace each and every day because it is a hope
that we cannot let go, even though we know that there will be many more
deaths, many more broken and injured bodies, and many broken hearts, before
peace in this world is achieved, a peace that passes all understanding.  I
think that’s what my uncles and my grandfather would have wanted.


How does this relate to us as Christians each November?  How do we honour
the silence and the memories?  I leave you with the words of Stephen Cherry
to ponder:


We remember not to allow the past to capture us in its worst moments but to
build us up for the future.  We remember not only to honour the fallen, but
to raise them in our hearts and to promise to live lives worthy of their
sacrifice.

Jesus knew the power of remembrance when he took a loaf of bread, blessed
it and gave it to his friends saying, ‘this is my body’ and gave them wine
to drink saying, ‘this is my blood’ and told them to remember him in this
way.  For of such simple things is the kingdom of God – the long hoped for
future of justice and peace, mercy and truth - made. And of such
remembrance comes the forgiveness of sins, the cleansing of our hearts and
souls of our faults and failures and the all-too-painful realities that
accuse us when we think on the qualities of others, and judge ourselves by
the sacrifice made by those who cannot be here because they have given
their all.

It is our duty this day to ensure that those who in the cause of peace have
given, and continue to give, of their life, their health, their youth, are
honoured and remembered. But in our remembering we must also vow to give of
ourselves for the good of humanity, especially of the generations yet to
come; who will themselves one day stand in silent remembrance and grow in
hope.



Amen

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