Armistice Day 2014

With today's final acts of remembrance bringing the 2014 season of remembrance to and end I thought it might be the right time to remind everyone that we still have some 208 weeks (1,461 days) left before we can commemorate the centennial end to that conflict.

Can I take the opportunity to point you to the 'Active Service Gospel' produced by SGM

This wonderful facsimile of the book that would have been found in many of the pockets of those who marched away during the WWI conflict is a wonderfully effective means of grounding the Christian faith in the act of active remembrance:

Can I also encourage you to take two minutes wherever you are at 11:00 - and if possible to find a memorial or cenotaph - to remember all who have died as a result of war.

Those who died on active service - 2013

Please spare a moment to pray for the families, friends and comrades of those whose names have been added and are today commemorated on the walls of the National Memorial Arboretum's  (NMA) 'Armed Force's Memorial' (AFM).

Having commended them to God's grace, love care and mercy we remember them with pride and, mourning their loss, look to the day when the words of Micah 4,

'God will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore,'

Come to pass.

Those who died on active service* commemorated today are:

ARMY 

Richard Walker 

David Shaw 

Nicholas Guya 

Jamie Webb 

Samuel Flint 

Robert Hetherington 

William Savage 

Lee Rigby 

Edward Maher 

Craig Roberts 

James Dunsby 

Michael Ihemere 

James Brynin 

Ian Fisher 

Richard Holloway 

ROYAL AIR FORCE 

Frances Capps 

Rimon Than

* the names are listed in order of the date that they died.

WWI poets - Wilfred Owen

4th August 2014 is the centenary of the beginning of the 1914-18 conflict.

Some people I have spoken to are thinking that this is it but in fact the four years, three months and eight days (or 223 weeks) that we cover from the first act of commemoration through the many (some one hundred and fifty) battles trough to the final act of thanks (and then a celebration for that war's end) on Armistice Day.

As I began to focus on what this marathon will mean for me I was led back to Wilfred Owen's poem:

'Anthem For Doomed Youth'
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.


Here in Tamworth we have a former Vicar in the form of Morris Berkeley Peel who died 'tending the wounded' in May 1917 to think about (plus a wall full of men from our community who marched away never to return).

What about where you are?