So here's a wry offering for Remembrance Sunday, offered to you this Remembrance Day, in the hope that it will give you a smile at around the two minute silence millions upon millions will observe at 11a.m. It was inspired by Louis being asked to make this Sunday a day of young enterprise, making money selling junk at a car boot sale. Louis is a Scout, and he will (alongside many others from the global scouting movement) be attending a Remembrance Sunday service. I am an "ordained entrepreneur," and I love enterprise, aspiration, wealth creation and the "big society," firmly believing that work is not merely toil, but a celebration of the very nature of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So on that day I will lead the Sunday service with an Act of Remembrance at St Thomas's Hall, Cambridge where I am privileged to minister.
We remember the war dead not as tragic figures defined by death alone, but as those who lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved - and, of course, laughed. So I offer you a wry poem, written on the small screen of my Android smartphone, somewhere between London Liverpool Street as I returned from collecting the IET Information Technology Award for the Cambridge Heathcare team.
On a Remembrance Sunday Car Boot Sale
In Flanders fields the poppies grew
Between the hatching, straight and true
That marks our pitch - until our eye
Fell on an Astra parked nearby
With garden shears of every hue.
We earn some bread. Some time ago
We saw a boot sale near Heathrow,
Paid, and got paid. So we branched out
To Flanders fields.
Take up our offers so unique.
Roll up, roll up and take a peek
At all our wares. The value's clear:
Cheap DVDs and Belgian beer.
We've proved that it was time to clear
Those Flanders fields.
