The Importance of Remembering

As we get a bit older we tend to look back on certain periods of our lives for different reasons. I look back on my twenties as a decade of travel and with great fondness. I lived abroad for a couple of years and that allowed me to travel to neighbouring countries. My studies at the time allowed me other opportunities to do some training and courses overseas and I feel very privileged to have had those opportunities.

Perhaps, it was my theological studies and my love of history that sparked a fascination with the Jewish people. I was intrigued by their contribution to art, literature and culture in different communities, and I often found myself visiting Jewish museums in cities I travelled to. I remember a fascinating walking tour of the Jewish quarter in Prague, absorbing museums of Jewish history in cities like Toronto and New York. There were challenging visits to Yad Vashem, the museum of the holocaust in Jerusalem, where you read of the suffering the Jewish people experienced under the Nazi regime during World War Two, where so many Jews lost their lives in a terrible wave of barbaric extermination.

It’s a sobering place to visit and it reminds you of that capacity we have for evil, and how people did terrible things to their fellow man through obeying orders without question or challenge.

Last Friday, I needed to drop a message into the church and went into the building just as the light was fading. In order to access the vestry, I needed to turn on some lights and, as I did so, I was met by the very moving display of poppies assembled by the Cregagh Crafters and mounted beside the lectern and on the pulpit.

I had heard earlier that day of another series of explosions that had killed a number of children in Gaza city. The news seems full of these kinds of stories on an almost daily basis, so much so that we become numb or desensitised to hearing them. Sometimes, rather than process the information we have just heard, we switch on another channel, for some mindless chatter about something other than war, or some cheery music to brighten our mood, rather than dwell on the darkness of what we have just heard.

As I saw the magnificent display of poppies, I stopped to remember the bomb in Enniskillen in 1987 on Remembrance Sunday. On that day, at the Cenotaph at a Remembrance Day ceremony, the IRA detonated a bomb that killed 12 people.

It has stuck in my memory for a number of reasons. My cousins lived in Enniskillen at the time, and I used to spend holidays there. One of their friends lost his parents on that terrible day. I remember the incredible witness to forgiveness and faith shown by Gordon Wilson whose daughter, Marie, a nurse, lost her life in the blast. I remember some years later sitting in a lecture theatre in Trinity College, Dublin, at lunchtime, as he shared his powerful story and you could have heard a pin drop.

In the quietness of the church, as I stood before the poppies, I thought about war poetry I had learned about in school. I couldn’t remember poems by heart, but I remembered names like Siegfried Sasson and Wilfrid Owen, who described the horrors of war, losing their friends and the wiping out of a whole generation of young men.

I remembered the anger and the anguish of these poems, and I thought about the staggering numbers that continue to lose their lives today in the Middle East, in Russia and Ukraine, and in certain African countries, where civil war bubbles away over many decades and many continue to lose their lives and experience life changing injuries.

I always thought the point of remembering was to honour the memory of those who gave their lives for our freedom. It was always a deterrent, I thought, to steer us away from war.

Perhaps, we haven’t learned or appreciated the lessons of history so well. The voices of those in power appear to be incendiary and aggressive which seems to fan the flames of war and hostility.

Every time we stop and look and listen it prompts an attitude within me to want to build on what those previous generations have won for us, to build and stabilise the peace that was won at such a cost.

How can we use the platform we have in our families and workplaces to build a more peaceful future based on the life, death and resurrection hope that Jesus sets before the world?

A little reminder that the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin have designated Advent Sunday as a day when all churches are invited to pray for peace in the Middle East and to raise much needed funds for the relief of all affected by this terrible war. Bishops Appeal envelopes will be available to respond on the day for those who might be in a position to do so.

If you have memories of being involved in the life of the parish over the past 50 years, why not come along and share them as we try to capture them in writing on Sunday afternoon at 3.15 pm in the  Huston Hall.

Look forward to speaking again soon.

Much love to everyone,

Jono.

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