Lest We Forget

Today is ANZAC day. For those cacophonists not familiar with this Australian holiday, every 25th of April since 1916 has been set aside as a public holiday to commemorate the landing of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (hence, ANZAC) at Gallipoli. Dawn services at war memorials are a standard act of remembrance, as are parades throughout the day.


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

We love our narratives, they permeate our literature, films, dinner parties and phone conversations. The more I step back and consider my life, the more I want to be a part of a story, not only in areas of faith but family, country and history. More and more I am coming to see my life less as a series of events, or a timeline, or a list, or a ticking clock, but as a character. This character isn’t a persona I adopt, like some bug-eyed hack with translucent skin and a poor self image in a simulation computer game - rather I’m discovering who I really am and how I fit into this saga.

As I consider the meta-narrative of our faith, I begin to realise that there is a dissociation between our collective past and present. We spend so long contemplating our future and how it affects our ‘now’ that, often, we do not know our own history. I’m beginning to see that we need a healthy pull between past and future to understand our present and actually live it well.

When it comes to Christian faith the story that we remember, live and proclaim is fantastical. I caught myself on Good Friday thinking “oh right, wow, this is what I believe is more real than what I see. Well, that changes everything and makes me slightly odd.” The cool thing about the Christian story is that we are caught up into the plot. This is no fairy tale, but deep Reality and instead of me forming my view on what my beliefs are, I allow the story to shape me. I let the story tell itself through me, rather than imposing my own creative ‘genius’ on the plot line.

Remembering has become an important part of my life, this week holds one of my favourite days of the year as I wake early (some sort of miracle) to stand among the crowds at the ANZAC day dawn service . A increasing sense of importance hangs around April 25th as we realise that those who lived the remarkable story of Gallipoli are gone. What a daunting prospect it is to realise that if the ANZAC story is to be told in the decades to come, we must take it upon ourselves and tell it as if it were our own. Imagine how the second generation of disciples felt - “oh no, John’s just died, how do we keep it going now?”

Do we realise the amount of people who have gone before us, that have lived, died and decomposed in the ground? Here’s a thought that keeps me up at night, am I eating atoms that comprised someone else’s body millennia ago? Is the thing that is sustaining me now, actually someone else from long gone? I’ll just let that freak you our for a moment before proceeding.



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Irrespective of whether we acknowledge it or not; we stand on a mound of war, love, bodies and stories that all contribute to who we are. I want remembrance to become a part of my life, not only when I eat the cracker and drink the juice at church, but as I interact with my society and contemporary culture.

Back to our faith (as I find that everything else bleeds from this beating heart) the truth remains that if you believe the Christian story you’re already part of the plot. The story of Israel, says Fee and Stuart, is our story. Idolatry, religion without heart – doesn’t it sound familiar? What a great source of comfort it is to read Hosea after you have let your current addiction/fetish/laziness master you and you’re seeking restoration. Colossians 3 tells us that we have died and been resurrected with Christ – his story is now our own (or perhaps our stories are now given up for his). Again, there is much to be learnt from the early church, and from the middle ages and from the Protestants. There are many, many smaller stories that are making up this metanarrative and we’re all in this together, our stories are connected.

As someone who forgets what happened two days ago, it is a stretch to scrabble in the past trying to find a sense of place and history. I want to join what’s already going on and contribute to the story in my own peculiar, distinct way. I need to. I don’t want to fight my way through life trying to establish a new identity, or a new purpose, or joining a new cause. I already have one, I already have all of those things because I’ve been written into the Story. I look to the past, to the stories of those who have gone before to understand who I am and where I’ve come from. This holy saga is not individualistic, but it’s unique. It’s not based on capitalism or materialism, but it’s rich. I aim to live with the story soaking everything I do, every part of who I am. Because when I understand who I have been, who I am and who I will be, life becomes a great adventure.

Lest we forget, hey?