Last Sunday, we in the Cloughjordan & Borrisokane
Group of Parishes marked Remembrance Sunday as we do every year. The minute’s silence was observed and poppies were sold in all churches.
In Cloughjordan, where there is a roll of the war dead it was read publically at the beginning of the service as part of the commemoration.
I wear the poppy with pride, remembering especially my own maternal great grandfather who lost his life at The Somme.
However I know for many people the loss remembered is much more recent and so much more painful.
I am very conscious that in Northern Ireland it is especially poignant where so many soldiers, prison officers, members of the then RUC and latterly PSNI and civilians were callously murdered during the Troubles, leaving behind heartbreak, shattered lives and for so many a profound sense of loss and loneliness.
For them and perhaps some of you reading this it must surely be a very difficult time, marking another year without a loved one who should still have been a part of your life. If the various ceremonies at this time bring some comfort and support then that is surely a good thing.
And yet not everyone thinks this way.
I was engaged in an online discussion about poppies in the run up to Remembrance Day and one person in the conversation was quite adamant that we should dispense with poppies because they and Easter lilies divide Ireland! There is certainly no arguing that these two flowers, ironically both things of beauty, represent what are fundamentally different views of the events of the last 100 years.
To go on however to suggest that we should dispense with either or both of them is not I think a helpful way forward. Yes the poppy is controversial – there are even some soldiers who dislike it. There are some who prefer to wear white poppies, though personally I think pacifists should chose their own symbol rather than hijack someone else’s.
Equally I am very uncomfortable with the obviously enforced and often incongruous wearing of the poppy on UK media. Most disturbing of all is X-Factor on which it has become a politically correct fashion accessory.
That said, to many people, including myself, it is a meaningful symbol which tells something of our story. To ask anyone to dispense with that is effectively to ask them to shed part of their identity and that is a dishonest and repressive exercise which can only cause resentment and frustration.
In the light of the recent and somewhat baffling ‘Polyester Protestant’ debate in the Republic some might call the poppy a sectarian symbol but I personally don’t believe it is. To be proud of and celebrate one’s identity is not sectarian.
Rather sectarianism is surely the insistence that our story is the only story and that others do not have a right to their story.
The implication of this is that I as a southern Protestant who has no sympathy with the vicious and murderous IRA campaign waged in Northern Ireland have to tolerate another view of our shared history. There is another story and there are other symbols such as the Easter Lily that represent that story and the identity that goes with it.
I am not comfortable with that identity and that story, because it is not my story and parts of it are alien to my experience and understanding. With the approach of 2016 (the centenary of the Easter Rising) I do worry about how that story will be retold and how that will impact on those of us who are proud and loyal citizens of the Republic and yet find ourselves very uncomfortable with some chapters in its story.
And yet I don’t advocate the repression of that story and its symbols. Somehow we have to create space for both stories and their associated symbols.
Will those stories ever be reconciled?
Perhaps not entirely and not in our time, but in the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the Word of our God will stand for ever”.
There are things that we have to leave to God and in the meantime be prepared to live in the messy and sometimes uncomfortable world where different stories are told and different identities are celebrated.
Perhaps we could apply this same eternal perspective to some of the issues that divide our Church today?
Lift: ‘To be proud of and celebrate one’s identity is not sectarian.’
* Rev Stephen Neill is the Church of Ireland Rector of the Cloughjordan & Borrisokane Group of Parishes