Armistice Day.
How to reflect on Remembrance 100 years since war broke out in Europe and 96 years before a troubled peace was declared?
Of course we don't hear much from this Government about the big society any more, but that is not surprising, just as we don't hear much about hugging hoodies, vote blue turn green or any of the other phrases which turned out merely to be empty rhetoric.
Of course what we do hear is the constant litany of austerity.
And interspersed between the constant barrage of attacks on immigrants, welfare claimants and the poor, the continual rumbling about Europe.
When in 1918 the Armistice was signed the clear up began. Famously whilst the allies debated what might be done, the good burghers of Ypres just got on and rebuilt their city.
A British army chaplain, The Revd Philip Thomas Byard (Tubby) Clayton began to think about what might happen next.
His brainchild, Talbot House in Poperinghe, would in time close as the troops were withdrawn and begin to settle back down to civilian life with their families as they resumed the jobs that they had left to go to war five years earlier.
Surprisingly, Talbot House is still in existence as a centre dedicated to peace and as the home base of the Belgian grouping of Toc H, the organisation that Clayton started after he too had returned to England, first to train ordinands for ministry in the Church of England, in Knutsford, Cheshire, many of whom had discovered their vocation in the trenches, and then as Vicar of All Hallows in London.
Starting with what today we might call a data base, i.e. the friendship roll signed by the thousands who found respite, refuge and fellowship in Talbot House, Toc H in signallers code, during the war.
Clayton wrote to suggest that contact should be renewed and those who had survived the war years should dedicate themselves to service in memory of those many thousands who had lost their lives.
In this way Toc H began life as a voluntary organisation committed to serving local communities, it became the single largest source of 'volunteers' in Britain. although as older members commented to me, they kept their membership of Toc H as a hidden light and served as volunteers of whatever organisation they represented from the Red Cross to the Samaritans.
Clayton knitted this army of volunteers together through a concept known as The Four Points of the Compass:
To Love Widely,
To Build Bravely
To Think Fairly, and,
To Witness Humbly
So Toc H was built around a challenge to its members to commit themselves to Friendship, Service, Fair Mindedness and what Clayton, very much in the mind set of a later Archbishop, William Temple, saw as the secular expression of The Kingdom of God.
When I was appointed as Director of Toc H in 2000, my father commented, don't know a lot about it but it seemed to try to 'do good by stealth' which fits with Clayton's own aphorism, one of many, 'Do something useful every day but don't get found out'.
I always saw Toc H as an expression of what, under New Labour, active communities might be about or later what was meant by David Cameron's big society.
My time with Toc H ended and I am now able to relax and write my blog in my dressing gown!
But as I reflect on this anniversary of Armistice I am reminded that the idea of Europe sprang from the dream that nations should not, would not, could not tear themselves apart ever again, Europe represents a vision of a truly big society.
But watching the evening news on TV, reading my newspaper, listening to the poverty stricken debates between the parties, watching as we are threatened with separation, disintegration and diminishment as a nation I wonder what is needed to make this Armistice a true anniversary of a better way of living, a better way of thinking, a better way of sharing each others burdens?
Clayton's Four Points of the Compass might not be a bad place to start.
How to reflect on Remembrance 100 years since war broke out in Europe and 96 years before a troubled peace was declared?
Of course we don't hear much from this Government about the big society any more, but that is not surprising, just as we don't hear much about hugging hoodies, vote blue turn green or any of the other phrases which turned out merely to be empty rhetoric.
Of course what we do hear is the constant litany of austerity.
And interspersed between the constant barrage of attacks on immigrants, welfare claimants and the poor, the continual rumbling about Europe.
When in 1918 the Armistice was signed the clear up began. Famously whilst the allies debated what might be done, the good burghers of Ypres just got on and rebuilt their city.
A British army chaplain, The Revd Philip Thomas Byard (Tubby) Clayton began to think about what might happen next.
His brainchild, Talbot House in Poperinghe, would in time close as the troops were withdrawn and begin to settle back down to civilian life with their families as they resumed the jobs that they had left to go to war five years earlier.
Surprisingly, Talbot House is still in existence as a centre dedicated to peace and as the home base of the Belgian grouping of Toc H, the organisation that Clayton started after he too had returned to England, first to train ordinands for ministry in the Church of England, in Knutsford, Cheshire, many of whom had discovered their vocation in the trenches, and then as Vicar of All Hallows in London.
Starting with what today we might call a data base, i.e. the friendship roll signed by the thousands who found respite, refuge and fellowship in Talbot House, Toc H in signallers code, during the war.
Clayton wrote to suggest that contact should be renewed and those who had survived the war years should dedicate themselves to service in memory of those many thousands who had lost their lives.
In this way Toc H began life as a voluntary organisation committed to serving local communities, it became the single largest source of 'volunteers' in Britain. although as older members commented to me, they kept their membership of Toc H as a hidden light and served as volunteers of whatever organisation they represented from the Red Cross to the Samaritans.
Clayton knitted this army of volunteers together through a concept known as The Four Points of the Compass:
To Love Widely,
To Build Bravely
To Think Fairly, and,
To Witness Humbly
So Toc H was built around a challenge to its members to commit themselves to Friendship, Service, Fair Mindedness and what Clayton, very much in the mind set of a later Archbishop, William Temple, saw as the secular expression of The Kingdom of God.
When I was appointed as Director of Toc H in 2000, my father commented, don't know a lot about it but it seemed to try to 'do good by stealth' which fits with Clayton's own aphorism, one of many, 'Do something useful every day but don't get found out'.
I always saw Toc H as an expression of what, under New Labour, active communities might be about or later what was meant by David Cameron's big society.
My time with Toc H ended and I am now able to relax and write my blog in my dressing gown!
But as I reflect on this anniversary of Armistice I am reminded that the idea of Europe sprang from the dream that nations should not, would not, could not tear themselves apart ever again, Europe represents a vision of a truly big society.
But watching the evening news on TV, reading my newspaper, listening to the poverty stricken debates between the parties, watching as we are threatened with separation, disintegration and diminishment as a nation I wonder what is needed to make this Armistice a true anniversary of a better way of living, a better way of thinking, a better way of sharing each others burdens?
Clayton's Four Points of the Compass might not be a bad place to start.
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