41
Remembrance Sunday observances, the first question which any jour-
nalist would ask was “Isn’t the war a long time ago? Shouldn’t we
move on?” No one is saying that now and indeed it is remarkable how
many young people are participating in the various acts of remem-
brance. As a priest I am grateful that the beginning of the Gurkha story
is associated with mounting guard over a guru. I read about this inci-
dent in Chris Bellamy’s 2011 book “The Gurkhas – Special Force”. The
warrior Bappa Rawal found the 8th century Gorakhnath meditating
and stood guard over him while he was thus employed. When the
guru emerged he gave Bappa a kukri as a gesture of gratitude and said
that Bappa’s followers should be called Gorkhas and would be world
famous for their bravery and so it has proved,
Courage is of course a vital ingredient in any life worth living. I re-
member being taken around a mouldering church by the churchwar-
dens. One of them said to me “you know Bish, I think it’s only inertia
that keeps us going”. The other warden simply said “Courage mate”.
The courage we need is not of course only physical although that is to
be admired but at every stage of our lives we need moral courage to
take risks, to live life to the full, to persevere in illness and to stand up
for our beliefs especially when the crowd is against us.
Courage is an expression of our deepest being, the spiritual heart, and
the word is ultimately derived from
cor
, the Latin for heart. It is often
an instinctive striving rather than something you have to think about.
Because courage is an expression of our deepest being it may involve
the sacrifice of many desirable things – pleasure comfort and even exis-
tence itself. But life in all its fullness only becomes possible when we
have found the courage to confront death and strive after our deepest
being.
It is the faith of a religion that you need to confront death in order to
know life in all its fullness. This is the meaning of the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. The calling of religion is to resist death in
all its forms through participating in the life of God. We are called to
join Jesus Christ in confronting the anti-life forces which we see in un-
awareness of a neighbour’s need; in hatred of those whose colour and
creed are not like ours; in the immobilising fear which causes us to
