The white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union (www.ppu.org.uk)
A reflection on Remembance for morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on 12th November 2024
Here in the Northern hemisphere, November is an in between month. The joys of gathering in the harvest and celebrating its bounty are only a memory now. The leaves have mostly fallen, tender plants have collapsed, and the days are getting short. At twilight, as darkness falls, we light fires to warm us. We hope that there will be enough to keep us warm and fed through the cold and dark of winter. But it is too soon to look forward to lengthening days and the return of growth. Now is a time of reflection and remembering.
It is not an accident, I think, that the Church focuses on remembering in November.
At the start of the month we celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. We remembered and gave thanks for those who have been as saints to us, pointing us along the Way of Christ, and those we love but see no longer.
Last Sunday, we marked as Remembrance Sunday. We remembered those on all sides, men, women and children, service personnel and civilians, who have suffered and died in the wars and conflicts of the last century, in our own times, right up to today.
It is surely right that we should remember and mourn them, and in particular our own dead. It is powerfully symbolic to do so at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the exact time of the armistice which ended WW1, which so many vowed to be the ‘war to end war’. But we must never glorify our dead as offering a blood sacrifice for our nation. There is no such thing as a holy war. Jesus commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves. Our human species has been stained through the ages by a disposition to hate others not like us, to make enemies of them, to kill and destroy them in war, rather than treat them as neighbours we must love. Surely this disposition is a kind of original sin, something we need to guard against and repent.
I am conflicted by red poppies as a symbol of remembrance. Earl Haig began the poppy day appeal to raise money to support service men and women whose lives had been shattered in WW1, and the money it raises is still used for that good purpose. I remember as a child how my father wore a red poppy as he led remembrance commemorations alongside other veterans, as they silently mourned their fallen comrades, and remembered the dreadful things they had seen and been a part of. But I am dismayed at how the red poppy has come to be used as a symbol of British military glory, so that public figures who do not wear it are attacked for being unpatriotic, traitors even. I choose to wear the white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union instead, as a symbol of repentance, while I also contribute to the poppy day appeal.
For the rest of November, I suggest we should continue remembering.
We should allow our spirits to be lifted by happy memories of the blessings we have received, and the good times we have had this year. The burgeoning growth of spring. The beauty of summer flowers. The bounty of autumn’s harvest. The holidays we returned refreshed from. The meals shared with friends and family.
We should also remember the changes we have seen over the years. Fewer people live in poverty than when I was a child. People here in Ireland live longer, healthier lives. But we can also see the damage being done to the world around us, fewer insects, wild plants and birds, and increasingly frequent and intense droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. We must give thanks for the good, and mourn the bad.
Then, when Advent arrives in December, when we look forward to Christ incarnate at Christmas, and the lengthening days after the winter solstice, we can start to consider our New Year resolutions, what we ought to do to make the world next year more like the kingdom of heaven.
