Wilfrid Owen’s poetry (see below) introduced me to
the reality of war as a student at secondary school, along with Siegfried
Sassoon and Robert Graves these were the writers that helped me see the
sacrifice that we ask others to make on our behalf when we send them to fight
for us. These writers showed us what they suffered in war, as well as revealing
their courage. It is young men and women just like them who today continue to
offer their lives for us that we may live in freedom that we honour and respect
on this Remembrance Sunday.
All of us have some contact with war
today, even if it isn’t with the actual experience of fighting. One experience
that stays with me is visiting the S21 prison in Cambodia and seeing the remnants of
the appalling Pol Pot regime. It was an experience similar perhaps to those who
visit Auschwitz, a chilling and frightening
one to witness to the remnant and memory of what people do to one another in
war. The element that I found so scary about the Cambodian war was the way in
which it seemed impossible to work out and follow who was fighting who – the
terror would turn ally into foe in an irrational chaos. But, the museum that
this small school had become, the memory of the torture chamber that it was,
was honouring the dead. People came, people looked, and people saw what had
happened. These places of memory, like the S21 Prison Museum, as this day of
memory, Remembrance Sunday, are so important, for they remind us again and
again that war is a break down in all that is good about human community and
human flourishing. It is a day to imagine and experience again the trauma and
horror of war and to remember those whose lives have been consumed by it – and
those for whom war is a day to day experience still.
But, other than
imagining and remembering and honouring, what can we say today?
Can faith take us
through war, into war, along with war?
Can faith survive
war?
Well- we perhaps can only look to
examples of people who have revealed in their lives that faith can not only
survive but grow, nourish and bring inner peace in the midst of war.
Etty Hillesum is such a person. She was a
young Dutch Jewish woman working in Amsterdam
during World War II who kept a series of journals that recorded her spiritual
awakening. She served Jewish refugees in a Nazi transit camp before she too was
finally transported to Auschwitz, on November
30, 1943, at the age of 29, where she killed.
An editor of her journals, Anne Marie Kidder, writes that
Etty, "is a mystic who, amid the war's horrors, could affirm the goodness
and beauty of life and taught herself, as she taught others, to explore the
landscape of the soul and the soul's quest for truth and God.” Etty became, in
her own astonishing words, "the thinking heart of the barracks”. What does
it take to be able to affirm goodness and beauty in the midst of the horror of
war?
For Etty, war became the catalyst for the transformation
and purification of the heart. Rather than it consuming and destroying her soul,
as it did her body, her soul was made perfect through the experience; she rose
up to heaven, whilst her body was in hell. In war she found out what peace
meant.
"True peace will come when every individual finds
peace within himself; when we have all vanquished and transformed our hatred
for our fellow human beings of whatever race--even into love one day. It is the
only solution" she writes.
The Sermon on the Mount (see below) addresses this
issue of personal, moral and spiritual transformation. The refrain of ‘blessed
are’ seeks us to review the normal power politics of the world and human
relationships. The Beatitudes turn the world upside down – it is the poor, the
meek, the merciful, the seekers of righteousness and justice, and those who
suffer for it who are blessed. For Jesus the blessed are that group of people
who through personal trial and struggle are purified in heart, mind and soul
into being people of peace, inner and outer. They are people who renounce
worldly power and become living icons of love, truth and justice.
It is a disarming, challenging and
difficult road that Jesus leads us on. Of course we may be accused of quietism
if we focus too heavily on personal transformation – but I think that only
people of real inner peace will ever be able to broker peace in the external
world. It takes prophets and mystics to
transform conversation and power. Rowan Williams, I believe is such a
bringer of peace: unpopular, persecuted by all sides, suffering for the sake of
righteousness he refused to offer easy answers to intractable differences of
opinion but time after time with his gentle and well-thought out insistence he commends
people of great difference to one another. The Anglican Covenant was just such
an attempt to make individuals and groups take seriously the existence as
gift of the other who is different from us. He spoke as a man of peace and
in so doing he was powerless.
For men and women of peace are powerless in
the face of the world’s actions. Yet, as people of faith we know that the Cross
is ultimately greater than any power in this world. Jesus’ abandonment on the
cross, his utter powerlessness in the face of the violence and destruction of
the world was transformative – he rejected the ways of this world, and in
self-sacrifice and in peace he transformed the world. For in losing everything
of worldly value, we know we can attain everything of the greatest importance:
truth, justice, and ultimately peace.
So, this Remembrance Sunday when we
remember those who have given their lives for us, we can honour them most
effectively by focussing in on our own lives and in dedicating ourselves to
developing an attitude of peace in our hearts and minds, a practice that should
transform our speech and our personal and public relationships. We must always
look for and seek peace so that we do not have to ask young and old to give
their lives in active service:
“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty”,
writes Etty,: “to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more
peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the
more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
The Beatitudes: Matthew 5. 1 – 12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
‘Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’
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