Maundy Thursday

I'm late again. Or rather, I was too late and too tired last night to do justice to the day, having not arrived home from church until after 10.30pm. So here we are, looking back  on a day spent almost entirely taken up with the events of that night long ago when people were just as riven by strife, just as liable to exert power over those less well-armed, less well-funded than themselves, and to hang onto it by whatever means fell to their disposal.

It began with Di coming for coffee before we turned to the matter of turning three bags of moss into a garden on the nave altar in church. We were lucky to have the server Geoffers on hand to help us trundle it down the church - its wheels don't go more than one direction and it was the wrong way round to get it past the pews down to the open area at the rear of the nave, where people congregate for coffee after church. Then out came the decorators' plastic sheeting (moss is wet!), the eleven candle ends, the little tea-light holders - and the all-important taper to melt the candle bottoms enough to avoid their falling over when poked by the lighter later...

Eight hours later we were back in church for the celebration of the Last Supper. In all my years of coming to this church for this service, there have been 12 people turn up for it. Sometimes the servers can be extra, but there is always this sense of incidental alignment with the story. We sang the best of hymns - Drop, Drop slow tears; Of the Glorious Body Telling ... And we had our feet washed. The clergy washed one another's; the Rector washed ours. And it came to me that there is something incredibly vulnerable about the bare feet of people who would normally never walk about without shoes and socks on. It brought home the enormous pathos of the human situation in a way that imbued the whole service that followed with a feeling of tenderness towards humanity ...

A feeling that persisted as we gathered round the altar in the now darkened church, with its altar now bare, crucifix removed, candles taken away. The only light came from the eleven candles among the moss of the garden, where the sacrament in its silver vessel stood at the centre. The blackbird that had been singing outside was now silent; darkness had fallen. We sat in silence and thought of the sleepy disciples - and resisted following their example. I thought of how hard it would be to "watch and pray". What would they pray about? They may well have wondered the same thing. 

It was over just after 10pm. People began to drift away; instead of the sound of marching feet there was the noise of a car engine in the car park outside. No-one spoke. I took a few photos when everyone else had gone and went outside - the last photo in the collage shows how the church looked as I left. I was so tired.

Later today we'll be back up there, in daylight, for the last hour.