In a country churchyard ...

There is one war grave in Holy Trinity churchyard - you can see it in the foreground - but this seemed a suitable view for today, an hour earlier than usual, as we headed into church for a said Eucharist, with no music whatsoever. This allowed those who wanted to attend the town ceremony at the War Memorial; the rest of us went home for coffee.

And I thought about the place of music in worship and ceremonial. Yesterday Fr Simon talked about music doing the work of the Holy Spirit, and in the context of the Byrd mass I couldn't but agree: it was music rather than words or theology that brought me into church all these years ago. And I thought of the powerful resonance of the Last Post, or of the music of a solitary piper, and recognised once again that it is music and the language that is in itself music that hold the shreds of belief together.