A Voice at the Lectern
This morning, I was honoured to take
the Second Reading, I
Thessalonians 4:13-18, at the Remembrance Sunday service at Manchester
Cathedral. It could have been a daunting task; my voice is still affected over
two years after radiotherapy, and there is the almost terror of hearing your
own voice amplified in the cathedral nave, something that has the capacity to
leave you tongue-tied in nervous fright.
There were probably a few hiccups, but
I am glad that people still came to commend me for my reading. Yet there is
more to this occasion than my standing at the lectern in traditional garb,
which someone suggested looked quite regal.
Connections Near and Far
An uncle, the husband of my mother's
baby sister, was in the Nigerian Army. He may well have fought in the Nigerian
Civil War, but no one sat us down to tell stories of war, triumph, or human
suffering. We were in England then, and the most I learnt of the Civil War came
from the photojournalism of Peter Obe, compiled in his photobook, "Nigeria:
A Decade of Crises in Pictures".
In the 1990s, my partner had close
family ties to the Second World War. His maternal grandfather was part of
Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. He died in combat and is buried in
the Arnhem
Oosterbeek War Cemetery.
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| An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.) |
His mother was born on the day her
father was declared missing. For years, I would meet his grandmother in Arnhem
when the family came over for the memorial services in late September. Built
into my psyche were the words, "We will remember them."
A Tradition Kept
Even after we broke up, we remained
friends, as we are to this day. I did have a close attachment to his family,
and for the friendship we had developed, I was invited to, and did attend, the
obsequies for his grandmother, a dear woman of such strength and character,
independent to a fault, with a resolution forged out of the tragedy of war.
My friend would come over to the
Netherlands when I lived there to continue the tradition his grandmother had
observed for some 35 years. There was one time when he invited me to Oosterbeek
to visit his grandfather's grave with him. It was a solemn and moving occasion,
and I was already in such pain that it presaged my hospital admission barely a
month later.
Before the White Headstone
We stood before the grave and read the
inscription to a young man of 29 who had a wife, a boy, and a newly born
daughter, as well as parents, all of whom would have been waiting for his safe
return home. War rips lives apart and tears hearts out. Man's inability to find
reconciliation without the shedding of blood, much of it innocent, is
exemplified in that white headstone, and in the hundreds or thousands crowded
out of view by the cynosure of what brought us there.
Then my friend became emotional. He
promised me this had never happened to him before, but in that moment there was
a different kind of reckoning: memories and connections to a man from whom he
descended, yet who had died over 25 years before he was born.
The Weight of Remembering
This memory is why I appreciate the
weight of responsibility and circumstance; to remember, to acknowledge, and to
honour those sent into battle to help the greater minds in power come to some
sort of compromise to end all hostilities.
I am a pacifist, and yet I do see
circumstances where aggression must be met with force, though I am ambivalent,
if not trenchant, about how young blood is sacrificed to the ends of men,
accepting that resolution cannot come at the shooting of guns but at the
meeting of minds.
Blood That Cries Out
As a person of faith, I also think
about how much innocent blood has been shed in many lands, and who, in the
eternal scheme of things, should have been held accountable for these crimes
against humanity. Like the blood of Abel, I believe the blood of the many, shed
and spilt to the ground, cries out to heaven for vengeance and justice.
The wrath that awaits some leaders who
have initiated war will be unimaginable. This abominable tragedy unleashed on
the earth, even into the present, cannot go without divine retribution of
eternal consequence.
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.
Excerpt from For the
Fallen - By Laurence Binyon
