Articles - From the Vicar

The day before
it was calm.
In the days after
a new masterpiece
was born of imagination's wandering
of the smashed city.

R.S. Thomas's poem Guernica, from which the lines above are taken, is a meditation tinged with bitterness on Pablo Picasso's painting of the same name. The poem explores the paradox that Picasso's artistic genius was so awakened by the brutal devastation of the Basque town of Guernica by Franco's Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, that he was able to produce a painting now universally regarded not simply as a masterpiece but one of the twentieth century's defining images of mechanised brutality.

Later in the poem Thomas describes the painting as 'love in reverse'. That striking phrase might be taken as a description of all warfare - indeed of any wanton destruction of human life. The war against Fascism in the mid-twentieth century and the terrorist attacks on the USA on September 11^th 2001 had little in common. Yet terrorist and soldier alike have always been required to reverse any belief in the universal sanctity of human life in order to be prepared to kill. When we gather towards the middle of this month for Remembrance Sunday, we will do well to reflect on the psychological cost of putting love in reverse for those who have served their country in times of war.

Remembrance Sunday is charged with ambiguity for Christians. It forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that the peace which Jesus Christ came to bring is far from being a reality. It also challenges us to recall the new commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples: 'love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.' War, however just the cause, puts that commandment into reverse. Therefore the most effective way for us to honour those who died in the wars of the last century is to work tirelessly for justice, fairness and reconciliation in a world where all three are still disturbingly absent.

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