For the past two weeks I have been in America visiting friends and family.  Travel always gives one a new perspective,  and it is always interesting to reflect on differences between the UK and the US on such trips.

First, I have still been thinking a lot about the Remembrance Day activities in the UK.  I think that this year all of the events meant even more to me than usual after having just visited the D-Day beaches and the British, American, and German war cemeteries in Normandy.  It was especially moving to watch the video clip during the concert at the Royal Albert Hall the night before Remembrance Sunday of the veteran of a Welsh regiment singing the Welsh national anthem at the grave of one of his mates who is buried in the British cemetery we visited outside Caen.  That concert, the Remembrance Sunday service at Salisbury Cathedral, and the events on Remembrance Day itself were all very moving and emotional.  No country does a better job of remembering the sacrifices of its fallen soldiers than Britain, I believe.

At the Remembrance Sunday service at Salisbury Cathedral I especially appreciated hearing the song of a poem that we saw on many graves in Normandy.  The words are by Laurence Binyon, and the music was by Douglas Guest.  It says:

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

In America today it is Thanksgiving Day.  It is a uniquely American holiday, and one that I have always enjoyed as it is a time for being with family and friends and reflecting on all the blessings that we have enjoyed.  I am in San Francisco, and this morning attended an Inter-faith service that reflects the best that is San Francisco and the US. It was held in a Presbyterian Church, and  included clergy and members of the congregations from the following faiths:  Islam, Jewish, Buddhist, Episcopal, and Roman Catholic. 

In the newspaper yesterday, the daughter of a famous American columnist reprinted a poem written by her late mother, Pauline Phillips, otherwise known as “Dear Abby”, the advice columnist.  I’ll close this post with her poem:

     “Oh Heavenly Father, We thank thee for food and remember the hungry.  We thank thee for health and remember the sick.  We thank thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.  May these remembrances stir us to service, That thy gifts to us may be used for others.  Amen.”

 

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