Raise the Red Lanterns

One of my resolutions was to have more paper lanterns to decorate the church for Pentecost, and so I bought another couple of dozen. They will now march along the aisles and across the chancel arch in a near-continuous red line.

Pentecost is still the great feast day that gets left out no matter how we clergy try to get people interested. Once upon a time the following Monday was a Bank Holiday until 1971 when it was stripped of that status and the break was transferred to the last Monday in May, and long before that the succeeding week - the octave, really - was a time when everyone downed tools who could. Church and Chapel Sunday Schools would traditionally hold some kind of festivity in Whitsuntide, even if (as I found when I looked into the history of High Wycombe many years ago) it was just a walk to the river meadows half a mile away and a picnic. But now Pentecost slips into the background even for people who might often find themselves in church.

The loss of the Pentecost observance to the secular 'late May Bank Holiday' at least shows that the State now accepts that people should have statutory time away from paid labour and in that sense the Church has done its work in that respect. And I'm not convinced if we had a Pentecost holiday now it would have any effect on the numbers who turned up to make their communion!

Pentecost Red

When in doubt, post about vestments, as I have said repeatedly in the past. That line of thought led to me to recall that the set I have been wearing today is a unique Swanvale Halt possession, because it was made by members of the congregation. The ‘Marley Red’, as I dub it after its donors, Mr & Mrs of that name, has the customary Pentecost motifs of dove and flames picked out in gold kid leather, or something synthetic that resembles it. It’s made from a surprisingly heavy and quite coarse-woven fabric with a slightly slippery silky lining. I am not all that fond of it, because of the rather modern design; but I’m happy to use it on Pentecost Day, when it makes most sense, to do honour to the makers who are still around, and because despite its style it’s surprisingly traditional in some ways. As well as the dove-and-flames there’s a cross on the back, which is very proper, and the Marleys even saw fit to provide a maniple, when I would have thought Fr Edgar had consigned the maniples from all the church’s sets to the back of a drawer by that time. This thoughtfulness means I don’t feel improperly dressed in the Marley Red. It’s now back in its drawer again, probably to evade the moths for another year!

Music Lives Again

PJ Harvey may be reading poetry at the online Glastonbury Festival today (it is conceivable that I may say more about that another time), but this evening two cellists have been performing in Swanvale Halt as part of a renewed season of classical concerts, and how lovely it is to hear the instruments breathing the music - that's what the cellos sound as though they're doing, it seems to me. The looming red lanterns are this year's decoration for Pentecost tomorrow: I have replaced single-use rubber balloons with bamboo and paper!

Pentecost Triptych

Like the Paschal Liturgy, Pentecost Day presents another challenge - at least it does at Swanvale Halt, where I've adopted the practice of transferring the full-scale Blessing of the Font from the Easter Vigil to Pentecost Day, celebrating the Church being equipped for its mission by the coming of the Holy Spirit. Of course at the moment, as with everything else, I'm doing it on my own and so the 8am mass required me to carry my phone through the church from its now-customary station near the high altar to the font where the ceremonies took place. At least the journey presented fewer trip hazards than my adventures on Easter morning. Instead of a homily I described what I was doing and why for the benefit of the video and those bold souls who might be watching it - the Litany of the Saints, the scattering of the water, the Sufflation and infusion of the Oils, dipping the Paschal Candle in the water, and the Commission of the (absent) People. Apart from the phone slipping and so not being exactly positioned where I wanted, it all went fine.

It couldn't last. Having put my potatoes in the oven to roast for lunch, after about twenty minutes I was disturbed by a mysterious odour whose nature I couldn't quite tie down. I then remembered I'd been trying to get grease off the roasting dish, and had left it to soak, so the aroma was the combined perfume of heated vegetable oil and washing-up liquid. I prepared new potatoes. A shameful waste, I know, but I couldn't think of them in the same way. 

The Bride Wore Red

The Bride of Christ, that is, whatever else may have been going on today in the world beyond Swanvale Halt. It's Pentecost tomorrow, so I've managed to photograph the balloons bedecking the church ready for the great festival. I would like to go even more over the top than a couple of lines of balloons between the pillars and some random ones scattered about elsewhere, but it's a lot to organise. Anyway, photograph them close enough and they look really very impressive.

(Not Quite) 99 Red Balloons

It's amazing to think that 2015 is the sixth year Pentecost has been celebrated at Swanvale Halt following the 'restored' pattern (restored only in the sense that I assembled it from other liturgical material), notwithstanding being missed out in 2012 when we weren't worshipping in the church itself. As usual, almost everyone forgets from year to year what it is we do. This year I hung strings of red balloons between the pillars, necessitating some neat acrobatics with the processional cross on the part of the crucifer. 

We did the 'speaking in tongues' performance of Acts 2 in which a group of people stand up during the reading to read verses 11 to 13 in a variety of languages, all at once. It introduced an element of pleasing chaos and silliness, added to by me sloshing water about from the font and then spattering the congregation with it before being spattered myself by a younger member of the company. Well; the Holy Spirit is not chaotic, but he may appear so to our limited human apprehension. A surprising number of people said how they enjoyed it all.

However in view of our reflections about the mission of the church I did think about how inward-looking it was. Silly though elements of the Pentecost liturgy may be, it focuses on the serious business of reminding the populus dei of their apostolic task as Christ's disciples, to heal, reconcile, serve and preach. This is a good thing, and a needful thing, but it also emphasises the distance between Christians and everyone else. Reminding people of their baptism by means of the asperges, to take only one element, assumes they are baptised, and I know for certain that not every adult present was; it assumes that they are within the system, and committed to it, not trying to work out what it is they might think and believe. It's definitely the discipleship aspect of the Church, rather than the missionary.