Walter was the last word in courtesy, a distinguished man with silver hair, knowing eyes and a tall erect frame. You wouldn't be surprised to be told he was a distinguished RAF pilot who survived the Battle of Britain and the rest of the war. His Christian faith was rooted in the life of a church community, the Boy Scouts, the church choir and a mind sharply critical and warmly appeciative at the same time when listening to sermons, or talking about practical Christian living. I met him in my thirties, and for some years he and his wife were friends of our family before they moved way down south. The words you would use to describe Walter would include modest, shrewd, disciplined, and of transparent integrity.
John Machalovich came to our house sometime in the winter of 1961. I know because I was 10 years old when we lived in that house in Ayrshire. He had a problem with his new Decca record player, one of the latest models that could play 8 records, but which would become obsolete a few years later when Hi Fi, Stereo and vinyl revolutionised the whole music industry, and with it, ushered in a whole new youth culture. But that night his problem was that his new record player kept blowing the fuses in his house. He came asking my dad for help. He was a Yugoslavian refugee, who had been part of the resistance in his homeland, and was now a tractor driver in a neighbouring farm. He became our friend for a few years before we moved, and he moved, and we lost touch.
Alistair was a small, unassuming man, who was a prisoner of war and shared a hut in a Japanese concentration camp with the great writer Sir Laurens Van der Post. To stay sane and distract him from his fears he learned to write with bamboo in calligraphic script. In later years he was the calligrapher who wrote the scrolls for the Honorary Degree Awards of the University of Aberdeen. He was a man of many interests, including ornithology, though most of his knowledge by his own admission was from his bird books - and he had some of the best and most valuable of these. I have two personally inscribed poems he did for me, and the combination of precise calligraphy and poetic virtuosity make them treasured reminders of a man who had been to dark places and survived, though not without enduring cost, and a self-imposed silence of what he witnessed.
The poppy is the clue to this post. These three men in different ways are precisely the people we refuse to forget when Remembrance Day comes round. These are men who stood against ideologies of hate, violence and oppression of the other and the vulnberable. I've never thought Remembrance Sunday need invitably be a celebration of war, nor a glorifying of the military and of conflict. These are three people who did what they did, endured what they suffered, and came home to build life again. But not without wounds of mind and body.
In the climate of contemporary Europe and North America, there are dark clouds reminiscent of those forces and ideologies that impelled the Western world towards war. Remembering those who died, and those who were wounded and went on suffering after the war, is of crucial importance to the future and the life opportunities of today's generations. The irresponsible rhetoric of division, the use of hate language, the seductive attractions of power for those fomenting nationalism, separatism and an over-against stance to all those deemed to be 'other', has to be challenged on moral grounds. Part of that challenge is to remember, and to act as reminders to others, of the human consequences of political failure, military adventures, and power sought as an end in itself.
And over and against such dangerous reductions of decency, humanity, generosity, hospitality and generous acceptance of diversity, I want to place the achievements and the sufferings of Walter, John, Alistair and countless millions more. These were decent people, men of ethical principle and responsible humanity. They didn't want to go to war. They had no pretensions to power nor were they seduced by ideology and the rhetoric of the politically overambitious. They did what they saw as their duty, and that meant they did things they found it hard to forget and harder still to forgive.
I wear a poppy to remember people like them, but also as a reminder how easy it is to unleash hell. The poppy's blood red colour far from glorifying bloodshed, symbolises the precious life of each human being, and dares us never to forget the cost and consequence of war. When I hear the shallow, strident self promotion of many of today's politicians, I refuse to be brow-beaten into accepting what they say; and I reflect on the sacrifices of so many, many people, who made possible the freedoms to speak such words. Freedom of speech is not an unconditional given, nor is it permanently guaranteed. It is a hard won privilege of free societies. People died to allow freedoms that enable people to live without fear of being silenced, or violated because they are different, or discriminated against by the powerful.
That's why at remembrance I always include the words that give moral impetus to those urgings towards the common good that underlie a society seeking shalom:
"Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream".
"They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks."
"He has shown you O man what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
One of the words made prominent in the last several years is the diametric opposite of those shalomic visions. The word is weaponise. One example. Immigration is weaponised when it is used to foment fear, anger and hate of the other, even when that other is desperate for human help. The weaponising of words has become mainstream in much political discourse. Those three men who fought for freedom of speech and thought, and to uphold human mutual respect, knew the importance of these.
It is the height of hypocrisy to wear a poppy and hate the other, demonise those we fear or dislike, or discriminate against on the basis of race, religion or other prejudices that dehumanise. The poppy is a reminder of precisely what it costs when these freedoms are abused, or co-opted into political goals pursued with damaging rhetoric and narrow self interest. Such behaviours and attitudes are, in fact, the blue touch paper that once lit have a tendency to explode.
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