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Tomorrow I have some folk coming round for tea/dinner/evening meal, so I have been busy preparing food so that I can just heat it up when I get in tomorrow. A definite sense of winter...
Just hope my guests enjoy it.
... as promised, a photo of the poppy collage the children made today, and the wreath with the adults memory poppies...
This morning we had the joy of a cellist and a trumpeter to augment our music. The choir sang beautifully. A number of visitors joined us.
The picture shows the response to remembering our own loved ones - poppies and tealights symbolising those we have loved and lost, or those whose stories have inspired us.
A teenage girl was inspired by a school history trip to Europe to come to the service and remembered a WWI soldier she had researched; others recalled parents, siblings, friends, partners, children.
We reflected on characteristics of authentically Christian grief and prayed for the world of which we are a small part.
Some wept their way through the service, finding the release cathartic. Others simply valued a different form of worship to their usual. Overall, I think it went well, and we benefited from sharing together.
The Sunday school made a gorgeous poppy collage - which I must get a photo of - and the little poppies the adults used were stuck onto the wreath to sit alongside it.
We remembered; may we never forget.
Today was walking club day, a couple of the pictures I took...
And of course a rather lovely longhaired black and white cat...
For those who like palindromic dates and times, or for those who love Pascal's triangle, today is a date in which to revel. But across the globe it is a day when, on average, 1 military and 3 civilian lives will be lost every hour in armed conflict. It is not a day to debate the rights and wrongs of armed conflict, it is a day to remember, with gratitude, those, often conscripts rather than volunteers, who paid for our freedoms in their own blood. It is a day to remember the countless children, women and men who live with the physical and mental scars of war. It is a day to pray for peace - not mere absence of war.
My friends include pacifists and military chaplains, retired armed forces personnel and anti-war campaigners. I have worked in defence; I hope I also work for peace. Do I have an answer? No, not really. But today, for a moment (or 120 seconds anyway) I will endeavour to stop and think.
Remember the Dead
Do not forget the Living
Pray for Peace