‘Remembering war and considering peace deserves more than two minutes a year.’
Thought for the week: Tim Gee on how long it takes to remember
On 11 November, at 11am, Britain stops for two minutes to commemorate those killed in war. Around that time, some people wear red poppies to remember Allied troops. Others wear white poppies to remember all victims of war, civilians as well as the soldiers.
Sometimes the ceremonies make space for reflection on how war might be reduced. Increasingly often they can glorify, glamorise and promote the wars that are happening now.
What is always the case is that, for me at least, those two minutes feel like too short a time to consider the millions lost, too short to ask what it is that we might each do to prevent such tragedies, and too short to receive a reply. It is too short a time to learn about the meaningful work of peacemakers – peacemakers who have been given too small a place in our history books – and too short a time to unlearn those attitudes that we have absorbed through our culture that make us more likely to make the same errors again and again.
That is, I suppose, at least part of the reason why I go to Quaker Meeting. Remembering war and considering peace deserves more than two minutes a year. To remember with integrity involves asking how a culture imbued with injustice can be rethought and remade for the better. It’s a consideration of such magnitude that it takes time and can’t be engaged with alone. When opportunities arise to change things, a Quaker community is a group with which one can do so.
To hold in our hearts the horror of war, inequality and of structural violence can be overwhelming. To sustain us in struggle I remember the advice of George Fox: ‘Do not simply look at the temptations, confusions and corruptions of the world, but at the light that discovers them. For looking down at corruption and distraction, you are swallowed up in it; but looking at the light that discovers them, you will see over them and with the same light stand against them.
‘There,’ he said ‘is the first step to peace.’
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