Poppy Day

It's Remembrance Sunday today - Poppy Sunday we used to call it. It is a day dedicated to all those millions who died fighting in the two terrible World Wars of the last century.

And what did they die for? To bring about peace on earth? Yet aren't we as far from peace as we ever were, if not further? 

I do not wear a poppy myself, but would never try to stop others from choosing to,  And for sure I think about all those young men who were killed, on both sides. And I hope very much they will live again. I hope that Jehovah will wake them from the dreamless sleep of death when the time comes. They will next open their eyes in an earth truly at peace - an earth under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God. And then their real lives can begin.

It will be such a wonderful awakening when it comes, from the horror of war, into the paradise earth.

So I thought I would remember them in four poems - none written by me.

The first was written by a Canadian, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, in May 1915:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

I have not put the last verse in as the conclusion he reaches is not the one I would. But I love the verses above - the poet captures the tragedy of it in a few words.  The horror of the trenches of the first World War - where, I believe this poem was written - is maybe not thought of much now. But it should be thought of today. It was a living nightmare.

So my second poem is one of Rudyard Kipling's about World War 1,  remembering those who were shot - by their own side - for "cowardice" in the face of the enemy. Nowadays we would call it Shellshock.

Kipling wrote:

I could not look on death
which, being known,
men led me to him,
blindfold and alone.

And the third poem is a very brave one by Thomas Hardy. This was written in the early days of WW1 when intense hatred was being fomented between the Germans and the English.

The Pity of It
by Thomas Hardy

April 1915

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like 'Thu bist,' 'Er war,'

'Ich woll', 'Er sholl', and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

Then seemed a Heart crying: 'Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,

'Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.'

Source: Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (Palgrave, 2001)

Thomas Hardy was not able to believe in a benevolent Creator, but for sure he saw the work of the one the Bible calls "the god of this system of things", Satan the devil. He is the one who sets brother against brother, and has done ever since Cain killed Abel.

Hardy saw clearly that WW1 was brother fighting and killing brother.  And, if we accept the truth of the Inspired Scriptures, that we are all brothers and sisters, the children of Adam, isn't that what all wars are?

So my last poem is an extract from Christopher Logue's "O Come all Ye Faithful"

O come all ye faithful

Here is our cause

All dreams are one dream

All wars civil wars.

Thinking of that "row of crosses" I remember when I first began my Bible study with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and they showed me that the cross is not a Christian symbol.  I saw that it was not, but wondered if it mattered. But then I started to think of all the things that crosses have symbolised down the years - national flags under which wars have been fought; graveyards filled up with the young dead of these wars... and I began to realise that maybe it mattered very much indeed.  It was all part of my waking up - in the spiritual sense.

And I hope that not only will all those slaughtered young men literally wake up - that God will re-create them from the dust of the ground and that they will live again - but also that the poets who wrote so powerfully about the wrongness and sadness of brother killing brother will wake up too.  I hope they will all next open their eyes in the restored earthly paradise, under the loving rule of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

And I hope we will be there to meet them.

To end briefly on a trivial matter - no disrespect intended - but this is my diary after all, I must note that Col having decided not go Detecting today changed his mind, after a good night's sleep and set off early. So the Sandwich Fairy was nearly caught napping!  Thankfully, I... er, that is she had thawed out some bread, and the cake drawer in the freezer was full. So he has not gone out into the wastes of wherever it is - to my horror I have found it is not on the calendar, so I will have no idea where he went to if he disappears - aaarrgghh - anyway, wherever it is, he has not gone there without his lunch.

The meeting at the Kingdom Hall was as always, in an increasingly troubled world, a godsend, and an oasis of peace.