Remembrance Sunday

I used to find Remembrance Sunday in our church very difficult, for a variety of reasons to do with tradition, expectation, and a basically civic approach that jarred with how I felt it should be. Not any more. We seem to have discovered new sensitivities, a different way of recalling something that none of us can still remember. (That's not strictly true; one of two of us are older than I am, but the idea holds.) 

During the Communion, I sang the Kontakion for the Departed. For people who don't know it - and there are fewer such now, because it was sung at Prince Philip's funeral - these are the words. I'll put the link to the music later. 

Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints:
where sorrow and pain are no more;
neither sighing but life everlasting.
Thou only art immortal, the creator and maker of man:
and we are mortal formed from the dust of the earth,
and unto earth shall we return:
for so thou didst ordain,
when thou created me saying:
“Dust thou art und unto dust shalt thou return.”
All we go down to the dust;
and weeping o’er the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.


Later, we went for a very brief walk in the rain round the West Bay (extra photo). The hills were sliced off by the low cloud, and it was very still and amazingly wet. I briefly hit the Gold spot at the top of the Duolingo Diamond League in Italian (fellow- language learners will get the significance of this: it didn't last!) and I cooked a delicious chicken dish with sherry and raisins and pine nuts simply because I needed sherry for the Christmas cake. I love dry sherry; we used to have it all the time until we started affording wine and realised that too much was too much ...

I'm finding the current Doctor Who ... too much. I'm bored by the constant unreality. The best tales have normal life being broken into by the abnormal - not crashing in-your-face abnormality from beginning to end.

The end.

Main blip: the grave of a WW1 soldier in Holy Trinity churchyard, now designated a War Grave.

Kontakion