I've spent this morning getting poppy collecting tins and boxes out to local pubs, cafes and shops (using a borrowed supermarket trolley - thanks, Iceland!). The usual small band of helpers, and we are I suppose a dwindling and aging band. But this is a time to think hard about what freedom really is, and what it has cost in human life over past years. The work of the Royal British Legion continues to be vital and necessary, and I hope that it will be as well supported as ever this year. Certainly we were warmly welcomed (nearly) everywhere we went, as we pushed our trolley through the local streets!
I am by inclination a pacifist, and I've from time to time faced some criticism for my active support of the Royal British Legion. My response to this is to make a careful distinction between peacekeeping and peacemaking. They are not the same thing. Peacekeeping may silence the guns, but we may still be left with the reality of an armed stand-off, which is still an unquiet and dangerous place. Peacemaking requires more of us - a real and active concern for the welfare of others, for a just and compassionate response to every situation of hurt and need, the beating of swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning-hooks. And this means that there will be times when those whose desire is to make peace must nonetheless take up arms against tyranny and oppression.
Those who have gone to war, ordinary men and women called up or offering themselves to serve, have mostly done so with dreams of peace in their hearts. I have the same heartfelt desire as I remember them at this time, and as I support the Legion in its support of those who have served and who serve still, in the defence of our realm and of human freedom. And if my hands are dirty, they need to be, in this real and broken and fallen world, in which our highest call is simply to do with best we can with what we have - but as we do so to continue to dream dreams of angels and to believe in that peace which is God's alone.
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