November 2013

Dear Friends

November, when the clocks have gone back is always rather a gloomy month. December should, of course, be even gloomier, but the Christmas festivities actually mean that it isn't. The Christian church does not help the November mood by holding three commemorations of the dead in the first two weeks of the month. These are All Saints Day (on the 1st), All Souls Day (on the 2nd) and Remembrance Sunday (on the 11th).

All Saints Day (November 1), which is the day to recall the many great Christians of the past, both known and unknown. Just as a country owes a debt to those prepared to fight for it, so does a church owe remembrance to the men and women who have given their lives – either literally or in the sense of a life's choice – for Christ. All Saints Day is not intended at all as a sad occasion. A priest wears white or gold then, the colours of celebration.

All Souls Day (which is now paired with All Saints Day,) is the day when we remember all those we have loved who have died and are now in Heaven. It originally was celebrated in the Easter season, around Pentecost Sunday, but is now celebrated on November 2. On All Souls Day, we not only remember the dead, but we celebrate the fact that God still loves those who have died. Christians believe that every person has an immortal part, a soul, and that this soul may rest in Christ.

All Souls, then, is a day when we can remember those we have loved, secure in the knowledge that God also remembers them. On the nearest Sunday, in both Wentworth and Harley churches, there will be the opportunity to speak these peoples names once again, to pray for them, and – if desired – to light a candle in their memory.

Please sign up on the lists in church to ensure that the person you want recalled is named.
Remembrance Day On the Sunday morning nearest to the 11th November (Armistice Day) each year, services of Remembrance are held at war memorials, cenotaphs and churches throughout the United Kingdom. The national ceremony is held in London at the Cenotaph on Whitehall.

The first Remembrance Day was conducted in 1919 throughout Britain and the Commonwealth. Originally called Armistice Day, it commemorated the end of hostilities the previous year. After the end of the Second World War in 1945 Armistice Day became Remembrance Day to include all those who had fallen in the two World Wars and other conflicts.

It is an opportunity for the whole country to become as one to gather to pay respect to the British and Commonwealth servicemen and women who gave their lives defending others. Church bells are usually rung "half-muffled", creating a sombre effect. At 11.00am a two minute silence is observed before the laying of wreaths of red poppies on the memorials. This silence is ended by the sounding of the ‘Last Post’.

The poppy has a long association with Remembrance Day. But how did the distinctive red flower become such a potent symbol of our remembrance of the sacrifices made in past wars?

Once the conflict of 1914-18 was over the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields. The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts. It was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.

So on Remembrance Sunday, whilst we are thinking of those who served and died during the two World Wars could we remember those who gave their lives in the ‘modern’ wars in Korea, Suez Canal Zone, Kenya, Cyprus, Vietnam, Aden, Northern Ireland, the Falklands War, the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan

 

SILENT HEROES

Where are they now, the ones we so loved.
They are resting above all the pain the endured.
May be somebody’s son, or father, or brother
Or it could be a daughter, wife or a mother.

Some colleagues are spared, with terrible wounds
Life can’t be the same, they will still hear the sounds
Of the horrors of warfare etched deep in to each mind
And all we can hope that someday peace they will find.

We must remember our heroes, their lives barely started
And their families in sorrow, forever now parted,
From all worldly pain, the end of life’s story
Lives given for others,
Forever resting In Glory.

 

-Lelia Musselwhite