Human beings are specialists in not seeing things. Most of the time, we screen out a vast amount of our world, a vast amount of what comes to us through our senses, especially through our eyes. Part of this is simply practical: no-one can manage to respond to all the promptings and signals that are actually coming at us, and one aspect of ordinary growing-up is simply acquiring the skills to select what is most useful.
But this is always in danger of slipping over into something else. Too easily, we learn to screen out what makes us uncomfortable, what challenges our sense of being in control. It’s not just that we select what matters and what is useful to us in finding our way around in the world; we select what reinforces our security and we treat everything else as if it didn’t matter.
And among the things we often prefer not to bring to mind is the fact that our ”˜ordinary’ secure and fairly comfortable lives depend on a great deal of invisible work by others. It’s true at the most routine level. But today we think specially of those who have chosen to put their own lives at risk for the rest of us. Some of them are asked to exercise the greatest heroism; some are called to that less spectacular but still real heroism which is to hold themselves in readiness of mind and body for whatever may come. When we recognize our debt to them, it is not only to those who have served and struggled heroically but also to those whose daily work and faithful support make it possible for heroism to happen. When we say our thank you’s to them, it is to all of them.
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Archbishop Rowan Williams: Sermon at the service of dedication of the Armed Forces Memorial
Human beings are specialists in not seeing things. Most of the time, we screen out a vast amount of our world, a vast amount of what comes to us through our senses, especially through our eyes. Part of this is simply practical: no-one can manage to respond to all the promptings and signals that are actually coming at us, and one aspect of ordinary growing-up is simply acquiring the skills to select what is most useful.
But this is always in danger of slipping over into something else. Too easily, we learn to screen out what makes us uncomfortable, what challenges our sense of being in control. It’s not just that we select what matters and what is useful to us in finding our way around in the world; we select what reinforces our security and we treat everything else as if it didn’t matter.
And among the things we often prefer not to bring to mind is the fact that our ”˜ordinary’ secure and fairly comfortable lives depend on a great deal of invisible work by others. It’s true at the most routine level. But today we think specially of those who have chosen to put their own lives at risk for the rest of us. Some of them are asked to exercise the greatest heroism; some are called to that less spectacular but still real heroism which is to hold themselves in readiness of mind and body for whatever may come. When we recognize our debt to them, it is not only to those who have served and struggled heroically but also to those whose daily work and faithful support make it possible for heroism to happen. When we say our thank you’s to them, it is to all of them.
Read it all.