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November 12th, 2017 12:47 pmWent to Rememberance Sunday service with the Brownies and Guides at Botley War Graves again today. It's an ecumenical service, or at least that's how it's described - it feels more like a Church of England service that everyone else is allowed to attend, but there you are. I used to feel less bothered by it and just went along, singing away and reciting the bits in the programme you're supposed to recite but over the past few years, I've become increasingly uncomfortable joining in with prayers as a non-Christian. I've been all over the place in my own personal experience of faith and have ended up coming back to a sort of atheistic agnosticism - to me, while the existence or not of God is unknown, it seems unlikely and particularly in the forms described by the organised religions I've been in contact with. I think my discomfort around prayer has been sharpened by spending several years in a nominally secular primary school where assemblies frequently end in a prayer. The formula they use is "if you wish to make this your prayer, join in with amen at the end" but the expectation is that the children will join in and it feels coercive to me, although probably not to them. I've been trying to be someone who visibly chooses not to join in at school, so that the children have a visible role model of behaving respectfully but keeping separate from religious observance.
The remembrance service is slightly different, because it is billed as a service of course, but while the blurb is all about welcoming those of all faiths and none, all the language is that of faith - there is no acknowledgement of those of us for whom the act of remembrance is about personal reflection and re-enforcing a sense of empathy with those who died in battle and who don't believe in a higher being making right later on the mistakes made during life. I do still like going to the Botley commemoration though - the ranks of graves of people who died so young always raises an anger in me on their behalf and I feel like I wouldn't want to lose that.
The remembrance service is slightly different, because it is billed as a service of course, but while the blurb is all about welcoming those of all faiths and none, all the language is that of faith - there is no acknowledgement of those of us for whom the act of remembrance is about personal reflection and re-enforcing a sense of empathy with those who died in battle and who don't believe in a higher being making right later on the mistakes made during life. I do still like going to the Botley commemoration though - the ranks of graves of people who died so young always raises an anger in me on their behalf and I feel like I wouldn't want to lose that.
