A confession about Remembrance 2011

[dewline]

I walked out in the middle of the first sermon, and headed for the Peacekeepers' Monument.

And I NEVER walk out in mid-sermon at these things.

Not in some twenty-odd years. I've occasionally stayed home, either due to illness or other obligations, but when I go the service at the War Memorial?

This was a first for me.

I am told by friends of mine who stayed that Rabbi Bulka got things back on something resembling an even keel, and if that's so, then I am very much a heel for my fit of...anger and guilt all bundled up in one package.

It could be argued by at least one of my friendlisters here at LJ that the first sermon was just a little too much of the sort you might expect to hear in 1914 or 1915, just as our role in World War One was kicking into gear.

I'm not sure if that wouldn't amount to mere excuse-making on my part, though.

Comments

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be the first time Bulka's fucked things up, and not in a good way. You'd think people would learn...

What made you walk away?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

To repeat: Bulka started after I walked away, from what I've heard. I would have recognized his voice.

The first sermon struck me - what I heard of it - as "Approved by the PMO". In detail and tone. Like something written up as if the event were already traditional at the start of World War One, rather than something begun at its end, tailored almost as a recruitment speech.

And the helicopter squadron making the run over Elgin Street?

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard about the fly-past. In all the years I have been attending the ceremony at the NWM or watching it on the tube, I have never once seen or heard of a fly-past. That is a Harper stunt, I'm sure of it, and it disgusted me from the moment I heard of it.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The fighter planes - whether museum-vintage or CF-18's - were nothing new to the Remembrance services. I've seen them from time to time over the years, with other Prime Ministers in office before Harper.

The helicopters were the new addition. I had conversations with friends from my Mac user group afterward - they were the ones who told me Bulka delivered the better sermon of the two, a more diversity-inclusive sermon (a couple of those friends are self-described pagans) - and they were impressed at the technical skill it took the fighter pilots to slow down to match the helicopters' pace without stalling out.

But the tone established by the fact of the helicopters' presence was what got to me the most. I don't know if I can quite explain it without getting into long tales of impressions left by news footage and TV and comics fiction over the decades from childhood onward.