The sombre restraint of Remembrancetide

Remembrancetide. It falls in mid-November, with the leaves fallen and the trees bare, the days shorter, another year reaching its end.

A fitting season to remember.  Far from the garish, loud days of Summer, these November days encourage a sombre quietness as we recollect loss, death, grief, sacrifice.

The last days of Autumn, as the dark days before Christmas draw near, encourage the modesty and restraint of our remembrance.

We do not gather to celebrate victory or give expression to patriotic fervour. 

The symbol of Remembrancetide is not the national flag but a little poppy - a memory of Flanders fields - pinned to our lapels.

The parson, standing close to the local war memorial, is in surplice, hood, bands, tippet: fitting ecclesiastical attire, echoing the modesty and restraint which hold and still us before the sombre quiet of Remembrance. 

A crowd gathers, each with the little poppy in their lapels. Quiet nods of greeting. Little, if any, talking. There is an inherent reverence to this moment that calls forth quietness, stillness.

The local war memorial is not grand. Noble, yes, but not grand, not overwhelming, for that would detract from Remembrance. Hence the sombre minimalism of the Cenotaph in London. Grand architecture may be appropriate for other memories, other moments in our national story. This day, however, requires restraint and modesty before the memory of great loss.

The two minutes silence, the heart of Remembrance. Sombre, solemn, respectful stillness before the memory of great loss. We do not attempt words. Those whom we remember are known unto God. And that is sufficient.

The Last Post cuts through the quiet of this November day, recalling service and sacrifice; the Rouse a foretelling of the hope of the Last Trump.

The prayers offered by the parson should be like those of the National Service of Remembrance. A short, decent collect, as we "do honour to the memory of those who have died in the service of their country and of the Crown". 

Then the Lord's Prayer, said many times in trenches, uttered in fear, offered in battlefield services, recited over a comrade's newly-dug grave.

It is not a time for fussy liturgy, edgy prayers, or banal liturgical responses. Collect, Lord's Prayer, blessing: these suffice. Like the padre on the battlefield, with few, trusted words gathering up before God emotions and experiences of such depth and nature that clumsy, awkward, hollow contemporary liturgical texts cannot comprehend.

As with the National Service of Remembrance, 'O God, our help in ages past' is sung. The sparse words of Isaac Watts' rendering of the psalmist's ancient prayer give voice to our lament, our needs, our hopes: "Be thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home".

The blessing. The parson invokes the name of God of Abraham, the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for our peace: "And give you his peace this day and always". In the face of the memory of great loss and sacrifice, a stark reminder so vividly of the fragility of earthly peace, the blessing draws us to the greater, enduring peace that is the gift and presence of God, to sustain us in our own times and troubles, guiding us to the peaceable City that is enduring.

It ends with the National Anthem. Ours is not a bombastic, nationalistic anthem - entirely unsuited to Remembrance - but a modest civic prayer for the well-being of the realm, the realm for which those we have remembered gave their all, that it would know peace and safety.

We go our ways in quietness, another Act of Remembrance now past; grateful, before God, for those who once responded to the call of duty; saddened that their times required such sacrifice; aware that "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away"; assured that the everlasting God is "our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home".