Southland Christian Ministry Training
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By Ian, on April 1st, 2011%
 What does ANZAC DAY mean? What is its purpose? As a Defence Force member, it is part of my job, but it is important that we don’t just go through the motions but seek to understand what it is really all about. For me there are three basic aspects:
- STOP! Often the trouble is that we are so busy that we never stop long enough to think about what we are remembering. Some have suggested that it would be better to forget many of these sad events in our past, but it was these same conflicts which forged us into the nation we are today. The spirit of ANZAC does not focus on a few heroes but the ordinary bloke! As we stop to remember, not just the pain and suffering, but also the good things like bravery, sacrificial giving and simply giving a mate a hand. But we must not stop there, we must
- LOOK and LISTEN! We must look to understand how that applies to our lives today. Many of us have never seen war first hand and it is all too easy to gloss over the cost of our freedom. We live in a very different world but war still exists and though it may have changed in some ways, it still brings pain, suffering and casualties. As we listen to the daily new coverage we are reminded that in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, winning a war is not the same as bringing peace. But stopping, looking and listening are not enough, we must
- GO! What are we going to do about it? Are we prepared to GO and allow the spirit of ANZAC to guide our lives? Will you go and courageously seek to bring that same meaning and purpose those around you? Are you prepared to fight for peace and justice? To do that we need to move forward, to learn from our past and seek innovative approaches to the same old problems of how to get along with each other, making sure that armed force is the last option not the first.
It seems to me that if we stop, look, listen and then go with that knowledge and wisdom that we will begin to experience what ANZAC Day is really all about. It is my hope and prayer that as we approach 25 April this year that it will begin to make sense to you too. As we pause, maybe we will also experience a miracle as God shows each one of us how we can make a difference.
Chaplain Ian S Whitley
By Ian Whitley, on April 22nd, 2010%
 As we look towards ANZAC Day I was challenged to consider what it means to me. Like many Australians, I share in a rich heritage of military involvement with my father serving in the RAAF during WW2 and several members of the preceding generation being deployed (and one killed) during WW1. ANZAC Day for me is a time set aside to remember the past, to pause and reconsider how that has affected me in the present and respond, allowing time to visualise how I can hand this tradition on to the next generation without distorting it or watering it down.
1 REMEMBER! Maybe the problem is working out what to remember. Many people think that it would be better to forget these sad events in our past – but it was these conflicts that made us the nation that we are. The reality is that the spirit of ANZAC does not focus on the heroes but the ordinary bloke – everybody gets a guernsey! We are to remember not just the pain and suffering but also the good things – the bravery, the heroism, the sacrificial giving. But we are not to stop there, we must also
2 RECONSIDER! What does it mean to us? Today we are deployed in another war zone, in a very different world. The tools of war might have changed but it still brings the same things; pain, suffering and death. Why are we here? To give a mate a hand, to offer peace and security, to do what we can to bring justice and hope, things which we all too often take for granted in Australia. Sadly peace and freedom always has a price, and if ANZAC Day teaches us anything we must reconsider if we are prepared to pay that price. However, we must do more than just reconsider, we must actually
3 RESPOND! What are we going to do about it? If we are to truly respond we must accept the leading of the ANZAC’s to  move forward courageously seeking to bring meaning and purpose, to make this world a better place. The trouble is there can be no real peace till we accept God’s answer to the problems of the world. The answer is not merely physical (getting rid of corrupt governments and systems), or mental (adopting new ideologies or political approaches) or spiritual (adopting a new religious system) but a combination of all three!
Well, that is what ANZAC Day means to me, and that is why I’m here! What about you? Sadly all too often we lose the balance between the past, the present and the future perspectives, and easier to address physical issues than the mental and spiritual ones!
Keep pondering
Chaplain Ian S Whitley
By Ian Whitley, on April 20th, 2010%
On reflecting on what ANZAC Day means to me, my first recollections were back in the 60’s where old WW1 veterans told stories of the Great War to end all wars, in which my grandfather participated.
 By the time I was in high school, at end of the 60’s and early 70’s the WW2 vets were taking over but this was also overshadowed by the Vietnam conflict, with those the age of my older brother being snubbed in the march because it was not a real war!
The pundits of the day were saying that interest in celebrating ANZAC Day was waning and that when the last of the WW1 diggers were gone that would be the end of it! Obviously that never happened, and as I look back over more than 50 years I would like to tell you a story.
Ben was born in outback Queensland in 1887. His family travelled around a lot working in a range of mining communities in Victoria and then Western Australia. He left school at age 14. He gained experience in a range of jobs in the transport and mining industries and when War was declared in 1914, he was working at the Cobar copper mines. The very next day he began the journey to Sydney to enlist in the army.
Following training he served in the 1st Machine Gun Company of the 2nd Battalion of the AIF. It was not long before he was bound for Gallipolli, but never landed; his ship was diverted to Egypt and after further training, he joined the war in France. He rose through the ranks to become Sergeant, and even had the chance of a commission but turned it down. He survived but his brother Joe did not.
On returning to Australia, he paid his respects to his brother’s girlfriend, and in the end married her. Ben was my grandfather and he died before I was born. It was only a couple of years ago that I saw for the first  time a photograph of his medals, which included the Croix de Guire, a Belgian decoration for gallantry. On cross examination my mother simply said he would never talk about it. He carried those burdens deep within his soul, as he continued the rest of his working life on the gold fields of Kalgoorlie and surrounding districts as a winding engine driver. He passed away in 1940, aged 52.
Why bother telling this personal story? That is what ANZAC Day is about! It is not about great victories, but recognising and retelling the stories of ordinary Australians who volunteered to help a mate, and we as a nation paid a high price for it.
In every town and village in Australia there is a war memorial, and each ANZAC day a growing number gather to pay their respects, and to remember that sacrifice, which did not end with the last of the original ANZAC’s but continues to unfold with each new generation of Aussies who take up the challenge to live out those same values. It is all too easy to say “lest we forget” than to do the hard work of researching our own family history and telling those stories to our children, and grandchildren, so that “we will remember them!”
Chaplain Ian Whitley
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