The green fields of home

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

I'm too young to have ever known a living link to The Great War but I've always known that the paternal side of my family, like so so many others at the turn of the last century, was decimated by it. Even as a child to go to the tiny church in the tiny Norfolk village where they lived, and to see three sets of our family name carved into the stone of the memorial was humbling - to realise that the same was true for most of the families in the parish was, and remains, hard to comprehend.
As a teenager we made what I feel should now be an obligatory school trip to the war graves at Ypres - the sight of those endless white headstones was far more powerful than any black and white war movie - the realisation of the sheer scale of loss was enormous. Watching the Centenary Remembrance Service today I was pleased to see people of all ages taking part - there are some things that should never ever be forgotten. A week ago I blipped 60,000 happy people dancing - 100 years ago nearly the same number of bright young men died in a day - something almost incomprehensible now.

Philosophy Friday
All week I've returned time and time again to this hauntingly beautiful tribute to Jo Cox by British band Portishead - both the song, the video and especially those now famous words seem apt today;

"We have far more in common than which divides us"