yrieithydd

Remembrance Is
Remembrance is personal. We each come with our own stories and memories. Some of us may have been in the armed forces or a civilian in a war zone, or known someone killed in war. Others of us may not have such intense memories but may have family stories - like my grandmother nearly being blown up in an air raid - on which we ponder.

Tonight we have heard personal stories in the poems which have been read - Isaac Rosenberg in a trench in the First World War, Wilfred Owen in a gas attack in that same war and Edith Sitwell in an air raid in November 1940?

For some a gathering like this might be important to share those memories. Others may find the memories too raw for such sharing.

But Remembrance is also political. How and what we remember makes a difference. Owen’s poem isn’t just the personal memory of the gas attack, but it is shared with a political motive - he is criticising the promotion of dying for one’s country as “sweet and fitting”. Rosenberg’s poem too has a political edge - noting the rat who would cross the border and touch a German hand.

We often say “never again” with reference to the Holocaust. But how do our acts of Remembrance - and what we do and say the rest of the year - work towards this goal? In the wake of the Second World War, things were put in place to try and prevent such horrors reoccurring. One of these was the European Convention on Human Rights, and yet now we have politicians and papers saying we should leave this. We’ve also seen a newspaper call judges the enemies of the people. Interestingly, that same paper is quick to criticise people for not wearing a poppy.

So, as we wear our poppies and pause to remember the past, let us also consider how we can act today for justice and peace.

Finally, Remembrance is spiritual. How does remembering affect our faith and our faith affect our remembering? We follow the Prince of peace, who prayed “Father, forgive them” as he died on the cross.

Coventry cathedral was destroyed by German bombs and has built a ministry of reconciliation in the aftermath - forging links with Dresden for example. In the ruins of the cathedral stand the words “Father, forgive”. Omitting the “them” was deliberate - it's not just them who need forgiveness but us too.

Sitwell’s poem brought together her experience of an air raid with Christ’s suffering and death for all whom he loved.

We heard Dan read Isaiah’s vision of swords to be turned to ploughshares and the choir sang the Beatitudes including “Blessed are the peacemakers”.

And we have prayed - “thy kingdom come”

So as we remember the past, may we work for peace, a better future and the kingdom of God.

(Text as taken to the pulpit, but I rephrased a couple of paragraphs - on Rosenberg's rat and Sitwell on the fly)

Poems read in the service were "Break of Day in the Trenches" by Isaac Rosenberg (who was born in our Parish), "Dulce et Decorum est" by Wilfred Owen and "Still Falls the Rain" by Edith Sitwell.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge.
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire of lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Wilfred Owen (March 18^th 1893 – November 4^th 1918)

As we remember all those who have died in wars,
May we never forget the horrors of war or the sufferings it causes;
May we find a way forward that does not involve violence;
May we learn to understand each other and remember that:
Every man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind (John Donne)