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Old Soldiers Never Die
In this, the month of remembrance, dark time of sadness and tears, we come face to face with our own frailty. Looking around at we people in church, I come to the conclusion that some of us are fast passing our sell-by date despite, once, being the younger generation, full of verve and vim, rearing to go.
When I left the forces, aeons ago now, the old boys of the British Legion were veterans of the first World War. They are long gone and have been replaced by the octogenarian combatants of the Second World War. Even to have fought in Korea means being over seventy years of age. The men who saw service in Malaya, Cyprus, Aden, Borneo, and at Suez have all collected their bus passes and are understudying for "Last of the Summer Wine". The youngest of the young men who sailed out to the Falkland Islands will now be teetering on the brink of middle age and looking apprehensively at their expanding waistlines. We are the lucky ones. We have lived to be old. Many did not make it through the various conflicts of the twentieth century. This is the month when we remember them, as if we ever forgot.
In paying homage to them on Remembrance Sunday, and at All Souls' Tide to all those who have passed this way before us, we become conscious of the fact that we, unlike them, are fraying at the edges and becoming wearied by age. Once we were bright young things, now we are now bordering on being daft old bats. When grey hairs start to show the downward spiral is inevitable. No point in plucking them out, that leads to premature baldness. The application of quantities of Grecian 2000 would be efficacious, but who wants to look like a two thousand year old Greek, or a Ronald Reagan clone?
Thankfully, there are some things which never date, never grow old and never fade away. Our liturgies bear the marks of centuries. The Lord's Prayer has been passed on practically unchanged from generation to generation for two millennia and we still use prayers which have their origins in the sixteenth century and before. There are always those among us who try to foist upon us their misguided attempts to make us trendy and up to date but that air of timelessness is what makes our services so attractive. Long may that continue!
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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