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Good morning.  Where does a nation locate its collective spiritual consciousness?  There will be several places that have sacred resonance, from different layers of national history.  In my own tradition I might think of Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral, the Cenotaph and the Royal Albert Hall.  Coventry Cathedral speaks of destruction, restoration, and reconciliation.  But these are difficult things to articulate.  Remembrance means different things in different places:  Berlin has a narrative of remembrance in its buildings and public squares  that is utterly different to London or Rome or Madrid, and it proved very difficult, for example, to design an architectural  monument to German reunification.  I recall being told by a German sociologist that it takes at least forty years for a historical event to settle in the national consciousness, forty years for it to be open to everyday discourse and artistic expression.   

Still comparatively new is the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which will eventually settle into its natural place in the landscape.  We recently dedicated there a memorial to the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department: a sculpture of swords into ploughshares, with references to the 23rd Psalm, in a quiet and peaceful place beside the river which runs around the Arboretum.  It will be for me and for my colleagues a place of spiritual focus.  There are many other memorials there: diverse in concept and design, deeply moving, testimony to civilian and military sacrifice over decades and indeed centuries.  In art and in architecture, as in music and literature, we can tell our personal and national story.  But the real value comes when we inhabit that story with a personal connection of faithfulness.  And so I pray:  Lord, allow me to honour the past, that I may understand the present and enrich the future.   Amen.