Remembrance

Padre Cook has many years of service in the forces behind him, and so brought a telling intimacy to this year’s Service of Remembrance.  The poppy, its frailty and beauty if one considers the European variety; its deadly potency to rip asunder and take over the self if instead one dwells on the opium variety.  Theatres of war that leave behind ghostly remnants of international interference.  Graveyards that honour the fighter, the medic and the chaplain side by side.  Peace that must not simply be hoped for, but must be fought for and preserved through strength of purpose.  No easy messages: but warfare and loss, and the reasons for them, deserve our proper contemplation, however difficult to hear, and however much we may need to debate the strategies we employ to mitigate them.  Our cadets paraded, the flags dipped in honour, the wreaths were laid, we prayed for the departed, and the lone trumpet sounded over Woodbridge as the maroons burst overhead.  Never forget.