Of course despite my earlier post Easter was fine. Attendance at the Triduum services was pretty much the same as last year, except for the 8am Prayer Book Communion on Easter Day which was well down, and the 10am which was noticeably up. I felt much less under strain this year. One thing I did was to adapt the old gold altar frontal so I could hang it properly on the high altar on a rod, rather than struggle trying to fix it with drawing pins. As I sat at home with it doing the sewing I actually said to myself, 'This will immeasurably improve the quality of my life', before realising what a thoroughly sad statement this was.
The only new thing we did this year was a children's service on Good Friday, the sort of thing which has been done in previous years but not for some considerable time. I've increasingly thought it's vital for there to be some family-friendly way of marking the Passion as otherwise families go straight to Easter morning and bypass the Cross; it isn't really the children I'm thinking of, it's their parents. We didn't get a high turnout but it proved the service can work and I can polish it for next year. I adapted the pattern of the Tenebrae, reading the Passion story and extinguishing candles one after another, and having the children bring up objects relating to the story culminating in the slamming-shut of a Bible, just as would have been done at a 'proper' Tenebrae. It amuses me to take a service which is a touchstone of liturgical conservatism and do it for children.
The high point of this year was perhaps when a well-known retired bishop of a Charismatic bent and who now usually attends a big Evangelical church not far away came on our ecumenical Good Friday Walk of Witness and had a conversation with our curate. 'Have you come across a service called Tenebrae?' he asked. 'We've just done it at Emmanuel and it was very good indeed'. 'Funny you should say that,', she replied.
The low point was the pall cast, at least for me, by the fact that a homeless gentleman who had been sleeping round the back of the church has disappeared and none of his family and friends have heard from him for a week now. Some of our local youngsters thoughtfully gave him a kicking last Monday night and apparently he said he was going to go and sleep in the woods at the top of the hill, but I couldn't see any obvious sign of him there. I know, from having tried, that I can't function with problem people in or around my house, but if something bad has happened to him I'm still involved in that.
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I was sorry to read about the youngsters giving the man a kicking. That the young are still learning to be this prejudice makes me sad. Society is coming on so well in accepting people from different walks of life, but still the human (however old) seems to find difficulties in being responsible and kind to people who so clearly need it. Is there still no vent in this society for people to alleviate anger or violence without doing it upon the breathing/living around us?
ReplyDeleteIf something bad has happened to the man it is another step on the ladder of the collapse of society and for that we are all responsible. I admire people like you (not that you need admiring) who care for society and try and make it a better place in a hands on approach of care. We can all provide different levels of care and looking for the man in the woods is a stack load more care than the youths (who should know better) and many people in society.
I hope he is safe and well and I hope that he walks a different ladder - not the one of the collapse of society , but the one that enables him to climb to happiness and freedom.
People's stories are so often incomplete as our lives brush against each other.