Lament and Longing

11 November 2018 marks 100 years since the guns fell silent at the end of World War 1. Like many others I took part in a Remembrance Service and Commemoration this morning, as I have done every year since childhood. And every year it gets harder. We, the human race, are wounded by war even when it does not destroy us. We create those wounds because, in our sinfulness, we have not learned how to live in peace with each other. And it continues to be the case that war is for some a very profitable business. Sometimes it seems all we can do is to lament.

The sonnet 'The Wound in Time' by the British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy was written for Remembrance Day 2018, to be read aloud on beaches around the UK and the Republic of Ireland, in recognition that most of those who served in our armed forces in WW1 and WW2 left by sea and many never returned. Those attending the beach events were asked to draw silhouettes of people in the sand at low tide, knowing those would be washed away at high tide. What a vivid way to lament! Here is Carol Ann Duffy's poem:

The Wound in Time

It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides,

chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it.
Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place;
the earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching
new carnage. But how could you know, brave
as belief as you boarded the boats, singing?
The end of God in the poisonous, shrapneled air.
Poetry gargling its own blood. We sense it was love
you gave your world for; the town squares silent,
awaiting their cenotaphs. What happened next?
War. And after that? War. And now? War. War.
History might as well be water, chastising this shore;
for we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice.
Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea. 

© Carol Ann Duffy, 2018

Carol Ann Duffy's poem is uncomfortable, as I am sure it is meant to be. It effectively laments lost joy, lost people, lost faith in God and underlines our failure to learn from history. It leaves us with the question, 'And now?' It offers no formula of hope. Those who grieve know that easy platitudes about healing and hope offered by well-meaning people sometimes do more damage while attempting comfort. Grief and lament for the past must be felt before the longing for hope and healing can start to blossom and a new way of living found.

In a blog post on 3 November 2018 'The Centenary of the Great War:Thoughts on Good Remembrance, Michael Sadgrove writes this about sewing up the scar of grief:

"A rabbi was asked whether a garment that had been symbolically torn in grief could be sown up and used again. Yes, he replied, but you mustn’t disguise the tear. The scar must always show. In other words, we always carry our collective and individual memories around with us. Time gives a perspective from which meanings can become clearer, the picture comes into focus. However we must learn in the ceremonies of remembrance not to make it better by easy speeches that gloss over the particularities of suffering, loss and grief with the language of willing self-offering and the glorious dead."

All Barrett, the winner of the publisher Jubilate's 2018 competition for a hymn to mark the centenary of Armistice Day and the end of the first world war, wrote something that sums up a longing for a better world. Sung to the tune 'Love Unknown' by John Nicholson Ireland, it begins with the question:

"Hope for the world's despair:
we feel the nations' pain;
can anything repair

this broken earth again?"

The rest of the hymn is a prayer that ends,

"Help us to sow

love’s precious seed

in word and deed,

that peace may grow."

You can read, sing or pray the whole hymn 'Hope for the World's Despair' here.

Yes, lament is important, but so too is the longing for a new and better world. The best hope I see for that is centred on the God of love, justice and mercy, revealed in Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. So finally, a Remembrance Sunday prayer for peace from Church of England Common Worship:

"God of peace,

whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom

and restored the broken to wholeness of life:

look with compassion on the anguish of the world,

and by your healing power

make whole both people and nations;

through our Lord and Saviours, Jesus Christ. Amen."

Image Credit: Tyne Cot Cemetery 2014, photo by me