It's said that people in the UK generally only go to Church twice a year; at Christmas and Easter. I don't know that's right really. Plenty of people turn out at Christmas, but Easter? not so much. In my experience after Christmas, the churches are at their fullest for Remembrance Day.
The service in the Cathedral here on Remembrance Sunday always finishes with local piper, vet and all round good guy Andy Cant playing his own composition, called Remembrance. It has to be one of the most beautiful tunes ever composed for the pipes. I'd like it played at my funeral after the internment but suspect that would verge on the blasphemous in a way; it wasn't written for individuals.
Anyway today Andy was playing on a set of pipes that had belonged to his uncle. They were played in France during World War I. They were played in North Africa during World War II. And today they were played in the Cathedral.
Thus are we bound to the stories and lives of those who came before. And with attention and focus so can we bind those who come afterwards into our stories too.
I'd have loved to touch those pipes. And I'd have asked Andy if I could, even though I'd have felt totally daft, but by the time we'd shuffled to the Cathedral door in the press of folk, they were already put away. That was a shame. But honestly it was a privilege just to hear them.
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