D-Day

Seventy years ago today my father was camped in a forest in England with his army outfit trying to put their gear back together.  A few days before they had been ordered to the docks for the D-Day invasion.  Their trucks had been waterproofed (I’m not sure how they did that) and everything was ready when a buzz-bomb hit them and “blew everything to smithereens!” (A direct quote from my dad I have never forgotten.)  The irony is not lost on me that that bomb may, in fact, have saved his life.

There are a few old soldiers, sailors and flyers left who were there; all old now but probably little more than teenage boys at the time.  There are still more who remember reading or listening to the news, wondering, worrying, praying for brothers, friends, sweethearts.  I am none of those.  I was not yet born, and had it not been for that buzz bomb, perhaps might never have been.  Yet, despite the fact that I was not there, it seems to me something should be said today, something reported or recorded in What’s the Good Word.  Some recognition should be given to those who fought and those who died so we and others might live.

When I was a child visiting my grandparents in Wiarton, my grandmother would often stop at a little house down the street and visit with Mrs. Meredith.  Mrs. Meredith lived alone in a tiny house on the edge of a hill on Gould Street.  There are only two things more I remember about Mrs. Meredith: she was not very tall, and her only son, her only child, went off to fight in the war and was killed.  Its not much for me to remember, but the memory must have been almost more than she could carry.

I was born a mere three years after WWII ended.  I remember people talking about things “during the war”, and to a child it seemed like it must have been something that happened a long time ago.  It wasn’t.  It isn’t.  And what is worse, for many people today war still rages.  While I sit in relative peace and try to coax these few inelegant words out through my fingertips, in many places fighting continues.  Will it ever end?  Will it never end?

So today, lets think about those teenagers who might have been our uncles, friends and neighbours.  Lets think too about those for whom war still rages…and let us pray for peace and justice for all.

Posted by Carman

6-6-14

In memory of 6-6-44.

Remember

Today is November 11th. In four hours from the time of this writing, we will each pause from whatever we are doing to remember and reflect upon our own thoughts of war and the need for peace.

I feel some sense of duty to prepare a blog for today, perhaps as a way to continue my life-long struggle with the subject. Remembrance Day posts in 2009 and 2010 have each generated comments from you filled with your own memories and struggles.

When I look back at what I wrote in those posts, it seems not much has changed. My thoughts are much the same. Like humankind, I have made little or no progress. Consequently, I leave you with that quintessential Canadian Remembrance Day poem written by Lieutenant Colonel John McRae, who appears to have felt no such internal turmoil. Wikipedia’s biographic sketch of McRae contains the following quote attributed to C.L.C. Allinson. The occasion of this remark was McRae being ordered away from the artillery to set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital in northern France. Allinson reported that McCrae

most unmilitarily told [me] what he thought of being transferred to the medicals and being pulled away from his beloved guns. His last words to me were: 'Allinson, all the goddamn doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and more fighting men.'

Remember today

Carman


In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; wait and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead, short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields!|

Violence

I’m sorry to hit you with that one. I am very much aware that you really, really have to stretch to consider “violence” a good word. But let me try.

December 6 is a day that many of us remember well. It’s one of those days that some of us can say “I remember where I was when I heard the news.” On that day a young man walked into a school, held several people in terror and finally killed fourteen bright young women before turning his gun on himself. In Ottawa our news feeds quickly became saturated with reporters’ and commentators’ and various “expert” opinions what had happened.

Colleagues soon began to wear the white ribbon that has become the symbol of solidarity around the issue of violence against women. Men and women alike struggled to deal with their emotions. What to say? What to think? Hours, even days were spent trying to put this event into words—to ourselves, to each other, to our children. We did or did not deal with the list of francophone names. What were we to do with that? This had happened in Montreal, in Quebec. Did that make a difference? How much did we “own” that city, those young women? It was 1989 after all.

How should we respond? How should we react? Would we let this day slide into the back of our awareness, onto the back pages of the newspaper, out of our consciousness? Or was there something else to do?

Now, here’s the “good” part. It seems to me that December 6 did become a turning point, a significant date when many things truly changed in the Canadian psyche. Different people responded in different ways. But few people really did let it go. Some lobbied for better legislation about guns. Not everyone agrees with their solutions, but it was never the same. Others paid attention to questions of equality for women’s education. I am aware of more than one smart young woman who went into engineering or law as a personal tribute to the budding careers snuffed out that day.

Some took their private thoughts into the creative arts. Books and poems and plays were written to help figure out some answers to some of those impossible questions raised in our minds that day. They keep emerging. For many the processing took years. Fathers and mothers spent time talking with children of all ages, trying to explain what was, and to hold up the ideals of what should be—what must be, in relations between men and women.

Today, tonight, there will be vigils held to memorialize the fourteen women killed that day in 1989. Their names will be read aloud. In Ontario the twenty-two names of women killed by their own domestic partners in the year 2010 will also be read. Because, although we’ve not buried the questions, neither have we resolved them. Alas.

But neither have we let go of them. December 6 is a day to visit once again the desperate need to bring peace into our families, into our relationships and to keep working to give those unresolved issues the attention they deserve. No more violence!

Posted by Marion

Dandelions

Living my kids' growing-up years in Gatineau/Hull we could always expect the dandelion explosion to happen right about the first week in May. And on Sunday morning, second Sunday in May, Mother's Day, there they would be covering the lawns and roadsides and boulevards. Bouquets of dandelions offered from small stained and sticky hands into mothers' welcoming grasps were the signal that Mother's Day was indeed offical.

I recall saying that dandelions were the guarantee that every mother could have a bouquet for her day. Of course, she also had those sticky stains to remove somehow, from her own and her child's hands. But that was such a small thing.

There would also be the flying fluffy seeds to follow and the complaints about the persistent weeds in the lawns to be managed with deadly herbicides. On this Sunday morning, the dandelions' cheery yellow faces smiled at everyone.

This is the first Mother's Day I don't have my mother. In the congregation of my childhood I would be out looking for a white bloom to pin over my heart to indicate my mother is gone. That was our tradition; a coloured flower for a living mum, a white one if she were no longer with us. There were other traditions over the years that mark Mother's Day in church and out. You may remember some of them.

Mother's Day in America was actually established as a pacifist reaction to the terrible loss of life in the Civil War. Julia Ward Howe led a campaign of mothers to stop the killing of their sons in war. That hasn't worked out very well, has it? And Mother's Day has been co-opted by the card, flower and candy companies.

I'll think of my mother this weekend, especially as I see all these beautiful blossoms. My mother loved plants and flowers! She wasn't too keen on dandelions, however, but to my mind you just can't beat a dandelion bouquet delivered from a little sticky hand on Mother's Day morning.

Happy Mother's Day to us all.

Posted by Marion

Tulips

Today marks the 65th Anniversary of the liberation of Holland by Canadian troops. That campaign has forged a bond of friendship between Canadians and the Dutch that endures to this day. As celebrations of remembrance happen across the Netherlands today, Canadian flags will be flown and aging Canadian veterans of the 1945 campaign will be honoured, and thanked. For most of them, it will be for the last time.

It may seem peculiar that this friendship runs so deep. After all, Canadian troops have served in peacekeeping roles in dozens of countries since WWII, yet no other such bond exists. It may be worth asking why.

Perhaps the answer lies in what is probably a footnote to the history of the war. Canadian troops fought their way into the Netherlands with the intent of driving out the Nazi troops. What quickly became apparent, however was that the people of the Netherlands were starving. They had no food. The focus of the campaign quickly changed from pushing out the Germans to feeding the Dutch, and food drops were organized for the benefit of the civilians.

After the war, the Dutch Royal Family thanked Canada by sending 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa. To this day every year the Dutch still send 20,000 bulbs, and our nation’s capital is resplendent in colour. This year the annual tulip festival in Ottawa is renamed as The 2010 Special 65th anniversary Liberation edition of the Canadian Tulip Festival.

Today, you will probably see Tulips blooming somewhere; it is that time of year. May we each pause to remember the legacy of this welcome flower of spring. Its colourful and beautiful bloom, however brief, represents a gift of gratitude from one country to another.

May grace and peace prevail in you today.

Posted by Carman

Labels

I've been reminiscing back through ALL the blog posts we've put up here on What's the Good Word? over a few months now. I'm very pleased by the thoughts we've put out there and the comments you've posted back to us.

One way to browse through some of those thoughts and consider them again is to use the "Labels" function at the bottom of each little essay. There you'll find two or three words that the author of each post thought might suggest a connection for you, our readers, and that might send you back to an earlier message with a connection.

I don't do it often, but today I've been clicking on the labels and re-reading what I or Carman was thinking about last August or October about vision, home, or generosity or whatever. Perhaps, if you too are in a nostalgic mood or have an extra few minutes for reading, you might like to do this too.

Who knows what thoughts you might think, or even be prompted to share about something you thought you'd forgotten?
(posted by Marion)