I used to meet up with my mother at Queen's Park on Remembrance Day. We would see the artillery being fired and observe the silence.

I've been able to recite Flanders Fields by heart since I was young (I've written it out below without double checking - every error a celebration of my commitment to it).

It's weird to me. I play wargames. I collect armies of little models and then battle against my friends. The universe we play says "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." The fiction I read is almost exclusively about war and adventure. And yet, I'm a bit of a pacifist and hope that none of my loved ones will ever see the horrors of war.

Maybe it's in this darkness that I get to explore the difficulties of humanity, comforted that I don't have to experience it myself.

It feels to me that all of life is on a spectrum. You have torture, sadism, and indiscriminate killing on one end. You have togetherness and community on the other. War is somewhere close to the torture end.

That means that our lives can be viewed from the lens of whether we helped to move our society in one direction or other down this spectrum. That means that every time you reach out with love, every time you accept someone as they are and invite them to belong, you're in your own way pushing back against war.

We shouldn't just remember our dead. We should be honouring their sacrifice. That means building a world of freedom. A world of community. A world of love.

Every time you reach out with community and love, you honour them.

In Flanders Fields, the poppies grow
between the crosses row, on row,
that mark our place, and in the sky,
the larks do, bravely singing, fly
scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago,
we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
loved and were loved, and now we lie
in Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe.
To you, with failing hands, we throw,
the torch. Be yours to hold it high.
We shall not rest, though poppies grow,
in Flanders Fields.
-- Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae

PS. In a similar vein, and honouring those who have served and sacrificed more recently, check out Highway of Heroes by the Trews.

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To you, with failing hands, we throw the torch 🔥🔥