Let us open our hearts to prayer. Today we pray for the fallen, young men mostly who went to war, some willingly, some conscripted. They went to war and they never returned. Their bodies lie in cemeteries scattered around the world.
In our prayer we remember them all and our hearts fill with love for them. Our hearts fill with love for the families who lost them - and whose lives were changed forever because of that loss.
In our prayer we remember them all. The world lost so much when they died. The world lost their energy, their creativity, their skills, their hopes, their futures, - their children.
In our prayer we remember how faith can be lost because they are lost - we ask ourselves how there can be a God who allows or designs that wars will come and that young people will die.
In our prayer we remember that many in times of war found strength through God and found comfort in God in times of loss.
May we in our prayers remember our God as a God of love and a God of comfort for each one of us.
Let us remember to ask who it is that brings warfare to our world - if we fight for power or whether we fight for justice. If we fight to make a peace.
Let us not lose our faith in a God who helps us through the storms and tribulations of life, supports us in our sorrows, comforts us in our loss. May we remember those who have died and those who have suffered - and remember too those who die today and everyday in a world that cannot stop fighting.
Address
I have seen pictures of the crowds standing at the Tower of London looking down at that sea of ceramic poppies to mark the centenary of the first world war. It looks like a river of red flowing around the moat. 888,246 of them
I read that many families go there there because amongst that stream they know there is one of hose poppies for them - maybe a grandfather or a great uncle - one whose history they feel connected to.
They feel connected with hearts that are heavy - because it brings home to them just how many died in that war - and it brings home to them that they died in those trenches for nothing.
In that worst of wars, no one can stand up and say, ‘It was a war for freedom - or a war for justice - or a war to liberate.. No one can make an excuse for that war, no one is able to justify it.
That war and those poppies are a memorial like no other in any other time or place. It was a war like no other war in any time or any place.
We wear our poppies to remember that terrible war and the hundreds of thousands who perished in it.
And we call it the great war - but it was not great - a war fought for all the wrong reasons.
Our poppy is not a statement that says no more war; it has no political implication, it is simply a statement of sadness and regret - it is a passive memorial to those who died in that great war.
Wearing the poppy, has not stopped a single war since - but we think of those who have died since when we wear that great war poppy
There have been wars in every generation - and people have died and we wear a poppy - but they have always died fighting for a cause - we like to think - whether that cause was misguided - or even false, there was a cause, we like to think at the time.
It is also a means to an end because the poppy also raises money to care for those who have been injured in wars or suffered because of their military service.
I wrote in an article for the National Unitarian Fellowship that nearly all conflicts in this modern era end in the same way - not in a victory but in a conference - usually called a peace conference.
We fight wars because there is a basic weakness in the human psyche - a dark side. Humankind so often is guilty of that sin of avarice. Humankind can be dark and deadly when one group want what another group possesses - or when one group cannot tolerate the presence of another group amongst them - either because they are of a different race, or a different culture, or a different religion, or a different family.
Usually there is often an unwillingness to compromise or negotiate or accept - a distrust of difference - but in the end they usually have to accept one another - but often it leaves smouldering embers that are difficult to extinguish fully.
It is difficult to envision a time when we will not have wars being fought somewhere on this earth. And when there is a war, the heads and hearts of people, especially young people are turned dark and they want to join - sometimes simply for the thrill of adventure, sometimes because they believe they have a cause worth fighting for - or to right a wrong.
Young people feel invincible - they feel indestructible; they are a long way from worrying about death.
So this is the dark side of human nature - that reflects a spirit that is capable of anger and aggression and hostility. That is able to fight - not to defend itself - but to attack and destroy. It is a nature quite capable of dehumanising those it opposes - no longer sees them as fellow beings - only as an enemy, only as an obstruction to victory.
It would be more understandable if this were the only side of human nature. If human nature was directed only to winning, directed only to making bigger and better weapons, directed only to pursuing science only to look for the means to overcome others.
That’s what we lived through in the cold war - putting all resources into weapons that make one side stronger than the other.
But there is another side Beside that dark aggressive side, there is a compassionate side, the white side of humanity. This is the side of human nature that feels called to heal, to make peace, to compromise and to accommodate change, to grow and to build up.
Without this side of our nature, wars would go on forever, there would never be peace.
We could say that this is the religious or spiritual side of human nature.
I know that throughout history religions have failed to develop the compassionate caring side of humanity but have instead followed an aggressive dark side, persecuting and crusading.
And yet even within the darkest days of religious strive there were the people of light, the white ones, carrying a torch - not to scorch and burn the earth but to lead the way to better things, higher things.
Human nature is so strange - how quickly and how easily it is inspired to go to war and fight, how quickly and how easily it is inspired to become intolerant, how easy it is to release that dark side.
Often we ask, how can this happen ? How can people be so easily turned away from what is good and noble and right ?
It is so easy because each one has that capacity to follow one side or the other. We can flip between aggression and compassion.
On an individual scale, we can become angry - and sometimes aggressive. On an individual scale we can like or dislike another person or group of people -
But on a spiritual scale we can overcome those feelings; we can call up the white side of our natures. We can respond to the urging of our conscience - and see that what we think is not actually good or or right.
As individuals we can have a level of control that the collective dark masses do not.
I often think we live in two worlds. We have a presence in the physical world - the material world and we are buffeted by its problems and caressed by its benevolence. We have to survive in it.
And all we have to survive with is this frail body and the vast internal world of our inner being.
The one can reflect the other. The real world can make us sad. When we are sad within the real world also looks sad.
We reflect our inner feelings into the world; the world can enter and damage our inner being. The two are separate but they actually have a mutual relationship - a harmony or a disharmony.
The challenge is to create harmony between these two worlds - and to me it starts with creating harmony in that inner world.
Being able to overcome anger and prejudice. Being able to deal with a sense of inadequacy or weakness or persecution or unacceptance.
To me this is the true role of religion - to help us on a journey through our inner worlds to reach those higher realms of love and understanding and tolerance - and acceptance of who we are - and that we have a place in the world that has value.
All religions began with this purpose - but the larger they became the more they focussed on the outer world and their part in it.
If only we practiced the religion of the inner world and made it strong, then the outer world would be slowly changed and turned away from darkness and wars.
Then we would wear our poppies only as reminders of the horrors we are capable of.
Let us open our hearts to prayer. In this time together let us reflect on ourselves - on our inner selves - the sensitive core of our being. That within this inner self, there are many layers and many temperatures. There are times when we can be calm and placid and times when we feel disturbed and angry. Times when we are vulnerable, times when we are impregnable.
There are times when the inner is in conflict with the outer, there are times when the inner world is distressed and unable to face the outer world.
Let us pray for peace to come to all who suffer internally and emotionally and let us find the wisdom to understand and support.
Within our inner selves let us seek a spiritual part of ourselves. To make a connection with powers and forces greater than ourselves. To seek the layers above our ordinary selves that by contemplation we can reach into - and enrich our own lives, enrich our understanding of the world, enrich the spiritual essence of ourselves.
There are layers of love, love for oneself, love for others, love for the animal world,love for the physical world.
Reaching into these layers colours our lives, brings a sense of peace and a sense of understanding the world itself. Reaching into these layers can reveal a purpose both for ourselves and for the the world itself.
Let us take time each day to reflect on those inner layers within us; let us feel them healing and comforting and explaining - then the strengths and the insights gained in our inner worlds will reflect from us as we live in the outer world. Let us find peace and make peace - both inwardly and outwardly as we travel the world..
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