Hallelujah!

550 years ago yesterday, on a bitter Palm Sunday in a hail storm, the bloodiest battle ever to take place on English soil was fought in the Yorkshire village of Towton. Today, half a millennium later, people still place flowers and light candles in memory of what took place that day when Englishmen murdered other Englishmen and thousands were killed in a rout which led to men stepping on their comrades’ corpses in their desperation to escape.

Ostensibly, it was a battle between the Yorkists and Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses but really, nowadays, who knows what was in the hearts of those young men when they went to war? Now, when the outcome of the battle is really of no significance, the descendants of those soldiers who died in that place feel only the silence that hovers over battlefields that seems to say, ‘why?’

A long past battle brings people together. On Armistice Day the veterans who fought on opposing sides of World Wars have stood together, acknowledging each other’s courage and each other’s loss. When the war is over and the cause is long-forgotten, the enemies stand together mourning their lost comrades and the loss of innocence and, perhaps, wondering what all the shouting was about.

The same is true of natural disasters...in the midst of the chaos people of all nations reach out to one another and come together. In grief, in tragedy, in the aftermath of wars, we drop our defences and find we have so much in common.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did this naturally, without the tragedies or wars? If episodes like this:

Hallelujah!

or this:

Dancing

were the norm?