From the Minister
November 2026
Dear Friends,
November is a month of memories, when we reflect on the saints and those who have gone before us at All Saints and All Souls, when we recall the averted threat of the gunpowder plot and when we pause to remember and honour those who have died in war on Remembrance Sunday. This has led me to reflect on what we remember and how we use those memories.
Remembering can be both a positive and negative thing. We can use memories to heal (the word remember can be broken down to re-member, literally to rebuild and to make whole) or to hurt and hold grudges. As we remember this month, let us try to make our act a positive one.
During one holiday in France, James and I visited Oradour sur Glane. Oradour is a small town which, until 10th June 1944 was like many others in France. However, on that day, supposedly in response to resistance activities, the German SS marched into the town, rounded up the men and separately the women and children and killed virtually the entire population, 642 people in all, gunning them down and burning the buildings in which they had been trapped. Only a handful of people survived.
The ‘martyred town’ as it is known has been left exactly as it was on that day as a lasting memorial to those who perished and you are able to walk through the streets and see how life was literally stopped mid-flow. Rusting cars stand in the street, you can see sewing machines and cooking utensils in the burnt out buildings. Perhaps most moving of all is the church where the statues are marked by bullets and a pram stands burnt and rusting where the font would have been.
Following this horrendous attack the decision was made to build a new town next to the old, overlooking the ruins. The new church stands between the old town and the new, along with a centre of remembrance telling the story of the 10th June 1944 and its aftermath.
It cannot have been easy for survivors and the inhabitants of the new town of Oradour to rebuild their lives with a constant reminder of human violence on their doorstep and yet the village today is a lively, vibrant place with over 2000 inhabitants. The memory of what happened has not been forgotten or pushed aside, but neither has it been allowed to fester into bitterness.
In the centre of remembrance is a peace room, a silent space filled with tiny lights and quotes that inspire a hunger for justice and peace and this seems to me to encapsulate how we can best use our memories – to stand up for justice and to reach out to others in love and forgiveness, remembering Christ’s words on the cross. At synod we reflected on ‘Shalom’, the Hebrew word which is frequently translated as peace, yet which also holds within its meaning ‘wholeness’ and ‘right relationship’. As we remember this year, let us to our part to work for the ‘Shalom’ of our neighbours and communities, locally and worldwide.
God bless.
Ruth.