Dear Friends
It is always embarrassing when we cannot recall someone’s name. As
a church minister I currently am taking over 50 baptisms a year, and around 50
funerals and 20 weddings a year. It therefore can be difficult when, on a
shopping trip or simply walking around the parish, I bump into someone who
instantly recognises me and yet who I struggle to properly identify.
I
have learnt the art of not revealing my ignorance – something I suppose
all ministers have to do. Also, perhaps I have some excuse. After all it might
seem strange if I asked for a photograph from every parent of every child who
was baptised, or from every couple I ever married. It might also take up rather
a lot of wall space in my study! Memory is an important thing, and we
can be forgiven for having occasional slips, yet there is one thing we must
always remember.
Remembrance Sunday falls this month on November 10th. We will be having our main service at 10am at the church, and I do hope you will come to this very important service, and mark with our congregation the two minutes silence at 11am. We all know the immense sacrifice that was made in both world wars by so many young men and women, and by the civilian population too. We sometimes can be guilty of looking on the past as the “good old days” – but this is really romantic mythology. How fortunate people of my generation are to have been born long after the Second World War had finished. We cannot begin to imagine the pain and sense of loss that so many must have felt, and in some cases still feel, when their loved ones did not return from the line of battle, or returned physically or mentally scarred for life, or were bombed or killed within their own homes. Of course the First World War saw even more deaths on the line of battle for our nation. Whole communities were left bereft of their young men, and a huge number of children grew up without a father.
Remembrance Sunday is not a way of glamourising war. It is a way of saying “thank you” for that sacrifice. Thank you for giving your lives to protect us. Equally importantly, it is a challenge to us to pour all our energies into making Britain a place worthy of the high respect that those soldiers so obviously held it in. If they valued their country to such an extent, should not we also shy away from cynicism and apathy and instead work with all our strength to build community, help our neighbours, and make it as pleasant a place as possible to live in? Of course we should! Unfortunately there seems to be so much selfish individualism in our society today – but that gives us no excuse to follow the trend! Remembrance Sunday is therefore also a personal challenge to each and every one of us.
Finally, this year I believe we shall not just be remembering the past. We shall also be especially mindful of the international situation. It is of course possible that by the time 10th November arrives there may already be a conflict with Iraq in operation. These days, despite the fact that a world war itself seems a very remote concept, the dangers are in some ways even greater than they were in the two world wars. As you know, the dangers of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare are real . In the cold war, such weapons were kept safe within the borders of the Soviet Union – now there is far more potential for such weapons to be smuggled out into the hands of leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, whom we simply cannot trust.
Whatever your view on the situation concerning Iraq, we shall be praying for the world situation on the 10th November, as well as remembering the past. Do come and join us in church for this important occasion.
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.
Simon Tillotson
This letter appears in the parish magazine. To subscribe to the magazine please email Brian Eddy or contact the church office.
Old and mouldy thoughts
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