Ypres, Gallipoli, the Somme, Mons and Verdun. The Western Desert, El Alamein, the Normandy beaches. Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Burma Road. The Pacific, Korea, the Falkland Islands, East Timor, the Balkans, Afghanistan, the Gulf, Iraq, Yemen.
Over these days, quiet remembrance and wreath laying ceremonies at war memorials throughout New Zealand and around the world are taking place. The eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the date when hostilities ceased on the Western Front in the war to end all wars is remembered as well as commemorating on Sunday 12 November, the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women to two World Wars and later conflicts.
This is a time to remember the love that was lost, the wisdom wasted, the courage and fear, the commitment and doubt, the resolve and vulnerability, the minds and bodies pained by memories, the families bereft, those who will die in conflicts around the world today, the makers of peace, the enemies who have become friends. We remember also the One who asks us to remember them.
Such remembrance is gathered to our hearts not to glorify the indescribable carnage of war, to collude with political justifications for warfare, neither to gloss over the brutalising and crushing of the human spirit. We do not gather the dead and dying, the grief and sorrow, the memories, the stories, the tragedies, the comradeship in life and death, to dis-member them.
Rather, we re-member them. This hallowing of memory is restorative. It moves us, not only to give thanks for the gifts of life and freedom which we tend to take for granted. It encourages us to bring to birth in our hearts and lives, goodness, justice and peace out of bloody holocausts. It is to envision the growing and flourishing of all that is good and beautiful, precious and shining.
I recently spent a few hours in the Te Papa museum in Wellington and visited Gallipoli, The scale of our war. Gallipoli was New Zealand’s first campaign of World War 1 and this searingly honest and moving exhibition, created by Te Papa and film-maker Sir Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop in Wellington, tells the stories of eight New Zealanders whose lives were irrevocably changed by war. I was particularly drawn to the story of nurse, Sister Lottie (Charlotte) Le Gallais. www.gallipoli.tepapa.govt.nz/saying-goodbye-lottie.
There are always the freely-voiced opinions of those in our churches and our nations who believe that we should, at this time, be engaging in conversations and debates about the meaning and purpose of Remembrance Sunday, Armistice Day, Veterans Day and Anzac Day.
Perhaps these important conversations are for another time. For now, the gracefulness of God enables a mutual respect and prayerful integrity and we pray for peace in the life of the world and in our own hearts.
Image: Lottie (Charlotte)Le Gallais, Te Papa Museum, Wellington