Dear Friends,

Do you remember my self-seeded flower from last month ?  I had another one (a bigger one) at the bottom of my garden; they were, of course, sunflowers.  They are often used in competitions, especially with children, to see who can grow the biggest, and the flower heads can be enormous; with their 'sunny disposition' they seem to be symbols of hope.

This month sees another flower coming to the fore, again as a symbol of hope - and also of remembrance - the poppy.  It bids us dig into our hearts and our pockets to remember the dead, and more particularly the survivors, of wars gone by.  Churches and communities up and down the land will hold ceremonies to mark either Remembrance Sunday or Remembrance Day (or both); we hold ours on the Sunday.  Both the poppy and the 'hour' - eleven o'clock on the eleventh of the eleventh - mark the First World War, of course, but the majority of those for whom we collect with the Poppy Appeal are survivors of more recent conflicts, including, I suspect, the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Whatever our personal feelings about the origins or rightness of any of these wars, the fact remains that the men and women engaged in them are (or were) doing so on our behalf and they and their dependants deserve our support.

The whole 'season' of remembrance actually starts with All Saints and All Souls on 1^st and 2^nd of November, when Christians celebrate the whole Communion of Saints - all those, both well-known and unknown, who have gone before us in the faith of Christ, without whom there would be no Church, no living faith.  The flower for this season should perhaps be the lily - often used at Easter and for funerals because it is seen as a symbol of purity and of resurrection; resurrection because it seems to die (back into its bulb) and rise again, and purity for its startling whiteness.  Today our faith is tested by a hostile and often uncomprehending world, one which largely fails to understand - let alone to value - the concepts of purity and self-sacrifice; one which finds 'resurrection' to be so much mumbo-jumbo.  Perhaps too many people in the Western world are too comfortable to appreciate sacrifice, and too remote from death (or think they are) to see any need for resurrection. 

All flowers die back in the winter (or else they seem to need pruning, as if to make the point to them !); some are capable of lying dormant as seeds for years, before re-appearing when conditions permit.  It sometimes feels as if the Christian Church, in this country and in Europe generally (though not necessarily elsewhere in the world), is 'dying back'.  We are not, as a nation, taking heed of our Christian tradition; when we do, it is often deliberately down-played 'in order not to offend others'.  This is nonsense, and the sooner we realise this the better.  Our faith is not 'offensive', and neither should it be defensive.  We have much to look back on, to draw from, to proclaim, and to look forward to.  "Consider the lilies how they grow... Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these... how much more will [God] clothe you, o ye of little faith".

No flowers for Guy Fawkes; just fireworks.  Some named after saints !