Today in preparing for our Remembrance Day service, I read about the man who wrote that famous First World War poem, “In Flanders Fields.” Named John MaCrea, a doctor, he was battalion surgeon to an artillery unit at Ypres.  For seventeen days he worked on wounded men in dug out holes in the canal banks.  He was in his mid-forties.  He didn’t have to enlist at his age.  Indeed, he had sworn never to go to war again after his experiences as a doctor in the Boer War.  There he had seen more men die of disease and the lack of care they got after being wounded then from the wounds themselves.

But when the call went out in 1914 John McCrea joined up again despite his fear because, he said, he was more afraid of his conscience. Later he describe the seventeen days at Ypres as being like Hades but it was the death of a young friend and former student of his, 22 year old Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, which led him to write the poem that has touched so many hearts.  Because there was no chaplain McCrae had to do the funeral rite. The next day he wrote the poem sitting on the step of the ambulance looking out over a landscape of makeshift crosses towards the one belonging to Helmer.  There were poppies everywhere and an East wind was gently blowing.

What struck me as I read McCrae’s biography was that here was an extraordinarily decent human being who found himself caught up in the most appalling horrors, not once but twice in his life, because he was a doctor. Here was a man who really saw, day by day, the utter cruelty and futility of war; who suffered his own losses and bereavements.  He didn’t die in battle but because he always had severe asthma he came down with pneumonia and meningitis and died before the war ended.  No doubt the time in the trenches did not help his already fragile health.

“There is no path to peace. Peace is the path,” said Mahatma Ghandi.  Every day ordinary human beings get caught up in war.  Every day they find themselves involved in something over which they have no control: another man’s quarrel, another man’s sin – but they are in the midst of it.  All anyone can do is try to keep their own sense of integrity, their own sense of what is a right way to behave.  They make peace in their own tents, among their own.  It is not much but to those round them, it makes a deal of difference.

Love is one of those words that has become devalued over time. Today we tend to use it mainly to describe the feelings between a man and a woman.  We are almost embarrassed to talk about love between friends, especially when they are of the same gender.  Yet some of the most powerful love I have ever come across has been between those on the front line in war; soldier, for example and colleague soldier, who would literally give up their life for their friend; who when they are fighting are doing so more for the person to the right and left of them then for any family member back at home.  Shared experience brings people together and the more powerful the experience the more strongly the ties are often felt.

Long before I was ever old enough to be attracted to a boy, I knew what it was to experience love. I was loved by my parents and siblings and I loved them back.  I didn’t think about it.  It was just there.  I knew I cared about my friends in a way that I didn’t care about the other children.  I loved the community I lived in, thinking it was special because it was special to me.  I loved people and places because they gave me a sense of belonging.

Love is about belonging. When two people fall in love they experience a sense of belonging to each other, of being at home with each other, in, what I describe, as their “right” skin.  They also belong to themselves, are at home with themselves in a way that they may not have experienced before.  If their love leads to a permanent relationship they set up a home together where they can root and grow their sense of belonging.  But this belonging is not simply about two people falling in love.  It is the family; growing up I belonged to my family and they belonged to me.  My family gave me a sense of trust and security but also I realised as I grew older an obligation to care to them.  It was at this point that I realised that love is as much about will if you are a Christian, as it is about feeling.  This is why Jesus could commanded us to love one another.

Belonging means attachment to the wider community, my friends, my workplace and those I work with, my home town, my culture, my football team. But seen like this it can lead the wrong way, into exclusivity.  You don’t belong to me if you don’t support my football team or if you weren’t born in this country.  This exclusive belonging is not love.

We know love to be most truly love when it is inclusive, not exclusive. When I think that love is about what I receive, what belongs to me as of right, I am in danger of becoming exclusive.  When I feel that belonging to this group is what sets me apart from others; when I know myself as over and against others because I belong to a certain crowd, this is not love.  There is so much of this wrong-headed sort of belonging amongst us – even in basically decent people, and it is the opposite of love.

When I realise that I belong to the other, just as much as they belong to me, and when I begin to consider the wider and wider circles to which I belong I find that there is no end to them. All of nature belongs to me.  Every time I take a walk and enjoy the autumn trees, birdsong, the breeze in my face and the sheer enjoyment of walking, all I see belongs to me.  At the same time it belongs wonderfully to everyone else.  But I also belong to nature in my responsibility to it and in my love of it.

Right at the centre of all this belonging is that I belong to God and he belongs to me. I can say, “My God,” and not feel embarrassed about it because I am not claiming exclusive rights to his love and attention.  Rather, I am taking up the place in his worldwide family he has given me and realising that I belong to him and to others.  He has made a place for me to abide in and he invites me to dwell there with him and all that he has made and loves.  It is where I most truly belong.