Remembrance... the problem is I don't remember, even my parents were children during the WWII and although my grand parents saw service they are no longer with us to remember. As the years go by I appreciate more what those generations went through but still there is a basic disconnect as I live in a generation with no "real" experience of war.
What we do see is spoon fed to us by the media and as Aeschylus (525BC) put it "In war, truth is the first casualty" and apart from those in our armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is very hard for us to comprehend.
The closest I've been to anything like this was last Christmas (and I'm not referring to the extended family fight over the Turkey), we were out visiting friends in Kenya when the post election violence began.
I could make our experience sound very dramatic, running a road block with armed guards, flying into the international airport in a light aeroplane over the burning buildings in Nairobi, being interviewed by the BBC on our return, etc. But for the fact I doubt we were realistically in any real danger (unlike a lot of the local people). However what I did find was that suddenly the choices I was having to make to get the family home safely, had an extra dimension where the wrong decision had (at least in my mind) the potential to be disastrous.
So I begin to appreciate the importance of the choices made by people in these conflicts and I pray for them in the taking of those decisions, where peoples lives depend on them. Plus I thank God for those people in the past that took those difficult decisions, which has given us an essentially free society we have today.
Picture top : Landing at Jomokenyatta Airport.
Picture middle : Church burning near Kibera in Nairobi.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment