A Trinity of remembering

We drove to church this morning under a wonderful, complete rainbow, one with the shadow of its twin around it, one which lasted all the way to the church door when I ran from the car through heavy rain and stopped to take its picture - and that's what this blip is. A rainbow for the last Sunday of the church year, the day celebrated as Christ the King before the annual paradox of Advent, the season of waiting for the birth of the Christ child which begins the whole cycle once more. 

Because the celebration of Christ as King takes precedence in the church Kalendar, another celebration was overlooked this Sunday: the feast day of St Cecilia, patron saint of musicians. Musicians need all the prayers they can get these days of hardship and denial; the songs of the faithful - in our case, 5 hymns as well as the Gloria, Sanctus & Benedictus and Agnus Dei of the usual pre-Covid Sunday Eucharist - silenced, replaced by organ music and a simple Taize Adoramus Te Christe sung as a solo during the communion. You can almost feel the longing for music as a palpable thing. 

This is also the day John Kennedy was assassinated. I am one of those people who still remember vividly the circumstances under which they heard of the killing. As was customary on a Friday evening, my sister and I came home late from school orchestra practice, ate dinner which had been kept warm for us, then went round to watch television at our Grandmother's (we didn't have a telly till I had graduated ...). My aunt, who lived with Grandma, met us at the door to say the TV was only showing the globe turning because "something has happened". Two days later, we were there again, just in time to see live footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. The next morning I felt so sick - physically - with it all that I didn't go into school till mid-morning. Because I was in Sixth Year, this caused no problems. It was all so strange.

So: a day of a rainbow, some wonderful pink sunset clouds, and Christ the King. What will the next year of the church see?