November sees us moving into a season of remembrance, a month in the church year sandwiched between Creationtide and Advent when we have space to reflect on those who have gone before us in our personal lives, in our faith lives, and in the public sphere.

In particular of course we remember those from our neighbourhood and from our families who fought for freedom from fascism.

Our streets and lapels sport the symbol which evolved out of the slaughter fields of WW1. This is from the Imperial War Museum website:

Poppies were a common sight, especially on the Western Front. They flourished in the soil churned up by the fighting and shelling. The flower provided Canadian doctor John McCrae with inspiration for his poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, which he wrote whilst serving in Ypres in 1915. It was first published in Punch, having been rejected by The Spectator. In 1918, in response to McCrae’s poem, American humanitarian Moina Michael wrote ‘And now the Torch and Poppy Red, we wear in honour of our dead…’. She campaigned to make the poppy a symbol of remembrance of those who had died in the war.

Artificial poppies were first sold in Britain in 1921 to raise money for the Earl Haig Fund in support of ex-servicemen and the families of those who had died in the conflict. They were supplied by Anna Guérin, who had been manufacturing the flowers in France to raise money for war orphans. Selling poppies proved so popular that in 1922 the British Legion founded a factory – staffed by disabled ex-servicemen – to produce its own. It continues to do so today.

Other charities sell poppies in different colours, each with their own meaning but all to commemorate the losses of war. White poppies, for example, symbolise peace without violence and purple poppies are worn to honour animals killed in conflict.

I confess to struggling with the big plastic poppies that go up on our street furniture at this time of year because they have nothing of the fragility or beauty of a real poppy and for me that quality of fleeting beauty is an integral part of the symbolism.

Poppies are a signifier of the fragility of life and the fragility of freedom; the plastic flowers cable tied to lampposts are the opposite, they will never decompose and they have none of the beauty I associate with the flower – the struggle for justice and the freedom hard won.

Of course, poppies do not blossom in the UK in November but, they blossomed beautifully in July in the patch of uncultivated farmland land bordering the church in Chaldon, in soil that had been left fallow. Now like the lives sacrificed, they are gone, but our memories and our struggles remain. Can you allow some fallow time in your life this month for memories and for fragile hopes?

Let’s remember this month those who have shaped us in our personal lives and those who have shaped our society by protecting it from fascism and guard well our freedom and our common humanity.

Lest We Forget poppies grow all over the world including in Palestine where as I write there is a fragile peace.