Easter

I've quite deliberately chosen to follow the story of the main focus of my Easter this year in my blips, not least because it has filled my days to the exclusion of much else worth talking about. If any of you follow church circles on Twitter, you'll see a good bunch of clergy from all over the country talking about barely having time to eat proper meals for the last three days; to that you could actually add church musicians, servers - in fact, any of the people whose care it is that these services actually happen.

Today brought the second celebration of Easter for all of us who were out at services last night. There's a very different feel to the Sunday morning service - not just because it's not dark, but because more people come, there are children - visiting grandchildren, mostly - there isn't incense (I didn't mention the holy smoke last night) and there isn't the sense of mystery. But what we did have was laugher - you can see the laughing faces in this blip as our Rector storms down the aisle sprinkling everyone with the water of baptism using two bunches of rosemary to ensure good distribution; we had heartier singing than we've had in years - you will notice that many of the congregation weren't wearing masks, which makes a huge difference to singing; we had another challenging sermon. Afterwards, a group of some of us women ended up in the car park after everyone else had gone home, laughing in a wildly unladylike fashion and acknowledging how lucky we are to have this mad community to belong to. 

So what were we looking for? What do we do this for? Is it just community? I owe at least Lady Findhorn a chat about this some day, but today, in answer to the challenge and before anyone asks, I was trying to formulate an answer that doesn't involve poetry. It's hard, but let's try this: All this glory in the building, in the rites, in the liturgy - they're all creating a tangible format in which to contain something that is real but fleeting, tangible but not willed, life-changing but unpredictable. 

There. Sermon over. Tomorrow I'll be back to doing the ordinary stuff. Tomorrow I have to defrost the freezer.