By Kathleen Kern

Last summer I attended a family reunion in East Anglia, England. While we were there, my father, step-mother, siblings and I visited the ruins of the Abbey Church at Bury St. Edmunds. In medieval times, the church was one of the largest in the world and its library an intellectual center of Europe.

After King Henry VIII closed the monasteries and confiscated their lands (1536-1540), the townspeople stripped the structure of its useful parts. Today the ruins have become a park where people picnic and children play on remnants of the building that jut out of the ground like natural rock formations.

One of many families visiting there caught my attention. A grandfather with a British accent strolled among the ruins with family members who had Australian accents. Some appeared to be of European and others of Chinese descent. Two Australian-Chinese granddaughters pulled at his hands, urging him, “Grandpa, run up the stairs with us.” Protesting that he was too old, he nevertheless let them pull him up a staircase leading nowhere. He listened attentively as the little girls pointed out — the way children do with clouds — what the ruined walls looked like.

As I write, the people of Spain are mourning the loss of those who died in the train bombing. Iraqis and U.S. forces are dying every day as the military occupation of Iraq grinds on. Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for the revenge attacks and counter-revenge attacks that will happen as a result of Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza. The people of Haiti are in danger of falling under the rule, once again, of a military dictatorship. Even greater violence and misery fester in Chechnya, Sudan and locations ignored by North Americans.

In times like these, it helps to take a long view of history. Consider, for example, the case of St. Edmund, whose bones once lay in Bury St. Edmund’s Abbey. Edmund led the Saxon resistance to the Vikings, who were raping, killing and pillaging their way across England. They killed him in front of his followers in 869. The descendants of these Vikings are the Scandinavians of today who largely eschew warfare.

In 1327, civil war broke out between the townspeople of Bury St. Edmunds and monks in the Abbey over civil rights issues. In 1349, probably half the townspeople died of the Black Plague. Under the reign of Queen Mary (1553-58), 17 people in Bury St. Edmunds were burned for being Protestants. In the next decade, Protestants burned 40 people in Bury St. Edmunds for being witches.

Standing in the vast ruins of the church, I thought about what it was like for the nuns, priests and monks to lose their vocations and livelihoods in the 1530s.

I thought about the pride the British once took in their empire, not understanding the misery that colonialism imposed on people they considered inferior. I thought about what it was like for them to give up that empire. I realized that throughout British history, people of various locales and stations in life saw their worlds end.

And yet, in the ruins of the Abbey, I also saw family members descended from the colonized and colonizers having a splendid day together.

Taking the long view will not comfort Haitians, Iraqis, Spaniards, Americans, Palestinians and Israelis who have lost and are losing loved ones in this current maelstrom of violence. But it is an expression of faith.

One day, my own country might go the way of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman and British empires. Maybe one day my city will lie in ruins — ruins that children innocent of past wars will delight in.

And God will still be there.