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This past Sunday’s service, blending Remembrance Day and All Souls’ Day, was a potent combination of the personal and the global.

I’ve worked in war zones for three decades, met with many widows and orphans and listened to countless tales of loss and destruction.

But after losing my mother last year (who fought a valiant battle against ALS), my empathy for other people’s loss has grown in a profound way. It’s increasingly difficult for me to separate the personal from the global – or as Leonard Cohen put it in his song Love Calls You by Your Name – “between the newsreel and your tiny pain/ once again/once again/ Love calls you by your name.”

Watching the current devastation in the Middle East, especially in Gaza and in Lebanon – where the area around my ancestral village in the Bekka Valley continues to be bombed- it’s easy for me to see the face of my mother and grandmother in the crowds of nameless victims.

And in Sunday’s moving service, I felt such a connection between the personal and the global that it made me weep.

Dean Chris’ sermon brought home the reality of the loss of innocent civilians in armed conflict in a visceral way, and I felt a tickle in my throat. Then Reverend Kevin de Mare read the Scroll of Remembrance for 2024, reciting the names of those in the congregation who have passed since last All Soul’s Day, and I choked back some tears.

By the time the choir sang the heavenly Requiem by Maurice Duruflé, the French composer inspired by plainsong, I was sobbing. The hymn I Vow to Thee My Country followed by the Last Post evoked both memories of my dearly departed mother, Susila Bryant, and images from the previous evening’s newscasts.

At the end of the service, I was a puddle.

I went straight away to light some candles for my loved ones- including my great-uncle Eric Soulis Ditmars a young naval lieutenant who was lost at sea in the Mediterranean in 1941- but found that there were none left to light.

After a roundabout search for fresh candles, I ran into Reverend Kevin, who had read out the Scroll of Remembrance and who could see that I was crying. He offered to pray with me and so we did. We offered each other condolences for our recent losses, naming my late mother Susila and his late partner Patrick, and I said a prayer for peace.

At coffee, I spoke with a young mother, who expressed her ambivalence about the military aspect of Remembrance Day, and we spoke of ways to make it less patriarchal and more universal.

At home that night, after watching the evening news, I wrote this poem, which I share with you now.

There were so many souls to grieve today at church
That the candles ran out
I insisted that the priest bring more
But no one knew where they were
I waited patiently until a young man brought out a handful
I lit each one
praying for you
For myself
For the world
For the overwhelming sense of loss
That permeates our televisual consciousness
Doomscrolling every night
Like Digital
Prayer beads
Remembering the nameless dead from imperial wars
Now and then
Poppies  are the flowers of martyrs
Here and there
This is no
Casual remembrance
This is the song of thousands of women and children
Killed by men who sell arms for profit
Their stories erased
In the name of glory
Forever and ever
Amen

- Hadani Ditmars, November 10, 2024, All Rights Reserved.