NATIONAL SACRAMENT

It is Remembrance Day in the UK. I always find it so poignant, so heartfelt. It’s a national sacrament in some ways; pretty much the only thing we seem to all do together, to gather for two minutes of silence, and remember the fallen.

Sammy went to the village monument, to remember alongside the gathered servicemen and women. She said that when the silence was underway, you could hear nothing but the distant motorway, a sound usually drowned out by the traffic and bustle of modern life. I rather like that - as though the country was remembering a time when even the church bells fell silent, and in the south east anyway, the faint rumble of battle across the English Channel could be heard.

I couldn’t go this time. It’s okay, I still reflected. Actually, in my two minutes, I felt a bit hypocritical. I started to wonder whether it was okay to remember the fallen heroes of wars gone by, and brush under the carpet the fact that at least two big wars are actually still happening today.

What’s more, geopolitics is shifting. I don’t know whether it’s okay to remember and say ‘never again’ when it’s quite possible that at the same time we’re tipping towards ‘again’ again. It suddenly seemed a bit complicated in my head.

Additionally, I wondered whether the two world wars might be slipping slowly into the rear view mirror. I had grandparents who fought in one, and great grandparents who fought in the other, but Generation Z are already two steps removed from those old folk. At some point… as terrible as it is to think it… will World War II be simply history? After all, we don’t gather to remember the terrible toll of the English Civil War. Nobody is ‘lest-we-forgetting’ the Battle of Bosworth Field.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Of course the world wars are different, even though pound-for-pound, the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century claimed more lives. The world we live in was absolutely shaped by the uniformed men and women who stood bravely for what was clearly right and true, and of course we owe them our greatest respect.

I suppose I just found myself wondering exactly what it is we are remembering, given that out there in the coldness of battle, in Ukraine and in the Middle East, we as a species can’t help but forget.

They say a sacrament is supposed to be a conveyor of grace. It reveals something about that beautiful concept - like a curtain being pulled back on something glittering and majestic, a sweetness to a bitter old world.

Perhaps that’s a hope - that by remembering, by purposefully showing the dignity and respect of a thankful country, a kind of silent grace - we’re sounding out those emotive intervals of the Last Post; sad and hopeful, sweet and sorrowful. It’s grace. That sounds a lot like what this world needs.