Dear Friends,

 

November is the month of remembrance, and as usual, on November 11^th, we shall be placing our poppy wreaths on our two memorials at Wraxall and Failand to remember those from our parish who lost their lives in the service of our country.

 

I shall also be remembering a more recent casualty of war: a young man I met recently in Wells Cathedral. I was there for a day’s ‘chaplaincy duty’, to be available for any visitors needing someone to talk to, and to say prayers by the famous clock after it struck each hour. Just before 3 o’clock struck, I was called over to the Choir (spelt in Wells as the Quire) to a place just in front of the High Altar.  There, a young man who had recently come back from service in Iraq had tried to take his life. ‘I just wanted to kill myself, and I wanted to do it in a holy place’ he said. He told his sad story to me and the paramedic and the verger, and we listened, and absorbed some of the horror he had seen, which had driven him to this terrible moment in his life. He was no coward, but he had found the brutality and suffering he had witnessed unbearable. It was not easy to find the right words to say. All we could do was to try to convince him that his life was precious, and that the whole point of this ‘holy place’ to which he had been drawn was to remind all who came to it of the love and goodness of God, which reached out to embrace him.

 

I don’t know where he is now, but I shall remember him in my prayers on Remembrance Sunday. His story is an example of the concern which has recently been publicised in the media about our national failure to take proper care of those in our armed forces who return from serving in areas of conflict. Their wounds may be physical or mental, but I doubt if any return completely unscathed, and they should receive all the help that they need. The Royal British Legion has been making this plea for many years, collecting charitable donations to make amends for what has not always been provided as a matter of course by the State.

 

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan – a conflict which many believe should never have happened. If we do not give them the support that they need and deserve on their return, then our acts of remembrance are empty gestures.

 

In our parish, let’s all pray, too, for Domini Knight, who sings in the choir at Wraxall, who will be going out to Afghanistan on December 27^th for a tour of duty with the Territorial Army Reserve, using her nursing skills in very different situations from what she has been used to so far. God bless you, and bring you safely back to us, Domini.

 

With love,

Rosey