What should Remembrance do in us?
Remembering is a fundamental part of what it is to be human. That is why dementia is such a sorry status; it robs us of our ability to remember, and as such seems to rob us of our very selves. I am constantly fascinated that the program which allows people to reconstruct their family history is not called 'Who do you think youwere?' merely 'Who do you call back youare?' The remembering of the past constitutes a key function of the present when information technology comes to our identity. David Runcorn expresses this with customary insight:
To remember is not to recall a memory (though that is part of it of form). To re-member is to re-connect with what has, for whatever reason, been dis-membered.
To re-member is non to look back into the past but to bring into the present all that has brought u.s. to this indicate, and shaped who we are, for skilful or ill. We are to live in remembrance. Those who do non re-member are non present either. In that location tin can be no healing until we are nowadays to the wounds, to the fractures of our story and history. Bids for new futures, attempts at renewal that do non flow from careful remembrance may look pious and visionary, just they are really escape bids.
If remembrance is central to human being, information technology is also primal to Christian conventionalities. The two fundamental events of both Jewish and Christian practice eye on remembering—the Jewish on remembering the deliverance from Egypt in the Passover, and the Christian in the remembering of Jesus' own remembering of this, overlaid with his own death and resurrection as a new expression of it. In both acts of remembrance, the events are told in thepresent tense, and not the past. In Passover, the youngest child has to ask 'Why is this nighttime special?' not 'Whywas tonight special?' And when nosotros share the bread and wine we remembering by recounting Jesus' words 'Thisis my body…my blood.' In both cases, our remembering brings the past into the nowadays and shapes the reality that we inhabit.
In a wonderfully poetic and evocative reflection, Adrian Hilton expresses what this means on Remembrance Sunday:
As millions of us make the pilgrimage to file past 888,246 ceramic poppies, a role of the states is still dying on Passchendaele ridge, and if not at that place, in Flanders fields or the Somme, where the lives of our bravest and best were snuffed out by snipers and trampled into the mud. Thousands of them yet sleep there, encased in unmarked tombs of distant affection.
Wives became weeping widows, comfortless in the void of grief. We are their children, or their children'due south children and their children'south children's children. They live forever in our Dna.
But what sort of effect should this kind of remembrance accept in us—how should it shape the reality we inhabit? Should information technology brand us protest at the rush to war that has marked Western decision-making for many years? Should it make us long for justice when information technology is now fourteen years since the Iraq state of war was alleged illegal by the UN Secretary General? And the person who led us downwards this route is now making millions advising other regimes on how to work in a similar style?
Or peradventure we should be concerned at our country'south connected status as a world leader in arms manufacture? Very recently we were the fifth largest global exporter, after Russia, the US, China and France, and nosotros are home to the third-largest artillery manufacturer in BAE Systems. Oscar Arias Sanchez, former President of Costa Rica, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, commented:
When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in instruction, housing, the environment, and wellness services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every 10 inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our achieve. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global artillery sales to pour into the developing earth with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations practice non hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, fifty-fifty when the probable use of such weapons is obvious
Alan Storkey offers the challenge from the perspective of Christian theology:
We'll rightly be remembering the war expressionless and injured this weekend. At present is the time for Christians to accost why wars happen and how they can finish. The artillery companies need wars and get them by persuading enough people that arming the world keeps us safe, and so war follows war. Information technology is the biggest failed experiment in modern earth history. In 10 or twenty years time, going on equally we are, a third globe war is probable through mistrust and competitive arming. But it could be stopped now. So it volition be riven with tension and may be too late. But, no weapons, no wars. Thus far all disarmament negotiations have been in the hands of the military and defence people and they sabotaged information technology in the thirties, fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties and even at the cease of the Common cold War. A measured international Christian will among two billion people for multilateral world disarmament can do it. Swords into ploughshares is armed forces and economic sense saving trillions, sparing decease, destruction and poverty, and cutting total earth CO2 by some five%. It is the blessing to the nations we can assist bring to pass. It puts the Lamb on the throne.
Unless remembrance forges in us a commitment to work for peace and against the continued influence of the artillery industry, the sea of ruby-red nosotros saw effectually the Belfry of London 4 years agone, remember the start of the 'Peachy War' 100 year earlier as we remember its end, will not have washed its work.
(First published on November 11th 2014)
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