maggi dawn

Pentecost Novena

Someone asked me yesterday what the Pentecost Novena is. It's the nine day period of watchful, waiting prayer between Ascension and Pentecost. I blogged about it here if you want the gen.

holidays

today was the last day of the school holiday, so I took most of the day off and took my son and 2 friends to the park, and a movie (Meet the Robinsons, a pleasant enough "life according to Disney" movie) and then home for supper.

one last holiday picture before exam term cracks on...

Easter

Seven Stanzas at Easter
John Updike (1932)

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse,
the moleccules reknit, the amino acids
rekindle, the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent; it was not
as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that pierced-died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but he vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Holy Saturday ii

Today is not (officially at least) "Easter Saturday", although cultural forces may already have renamed it for us. It's actually Holy Saturday, the day AFTER - after crucifxion, violence, death and burial.

It's a day of shock, of disbelief, of desolation, of not-knowing. 

I wrote some stuff on this today and decided to save it for the book. But go back here for further thoughts on Holy Saturday.

Anglicanism

as if to encourage me to bash out the remaining bits of my current script, a previous book I wrote a chapter for has gone into a THIRD printing.  I guess you all have a copy by now, but if not, it's now available again!

gone fishing

Simon Peter is pretty famous for being the Disciple who, after the dream had come to a crashing end with the death of Jesus, decided to go back home and pick up where he left off.  "I'm going fishing," he said.  The others went with him. "Come on, guys," you imagine him saying to them, "it's over. No more religious superstardom. No more changing the world. We can't do any of it now he's gone. We need to get our feet back on the ground and just keep on keeping on. "  So they go back to their trade. And it's right there while they are fishing on the lake (though with singular lack of success) that they meet Jesus again.

This story is nearly always preached with a kind of negative spin for Peter, as if going back to fishing was giving up too easily, as if he should have stayed and waited longer.  I guess if you do that thing of adding all the gospels together into one account, you might think that Jesus had said "stay" and he decided otherwise. I don't think it's quite that clear.  It was Luke who had Jesus saying "stay in the city"; this story comes in John 21, and may well be a later addition to John's gospel (if you read it you'll see that the book appears to conclude at the end of chapter 20)
But in any case, if you were Simon Peter, what would you have done?   

I don't find much solace in meditating on whether it was an indication of despair or bad faith that made Simon go back to his fishing nets. More to the point is what happened when he did: he was found by Jesus.  Here's the moment of solace - when you are lost, and don't know what to do next, no matter whether you wait in the religious space for Jesus, or whether you go back to your everyday situation, he will find you there. Let's face it, most of the time we have no idea what the "right" thing to do is, let alone whether it has God's seal of approval. Most of the time we make the best decisions we can manage at the time, and get on with it. Some of the time we barely even make a decision, life just happens to us.  But the point is that it's not up to us to find God, it's God who will find us. And his finding us doesnt' depend upon us being in the "right" place. Whether you make a good decision, a bad decision or just a humdrum everyday OK decision, wherever it lands you, He will find you there.  And when he does, he will restore you, bless you, and give you your breakfast.

(This idea was sparked off by a rather good sermon last night, given by the Rev'd Dr Simon Perry, at Churchill College, where  Churchill, Fitz and Robinson College Chapels had a joint service.  He didn't exactly say this, but he kind of set the framework for this idea to grow. )

Because he is risen

Because He is risen: a poem for Easter

Because he is risen
Spring is possible
In all the cold hard places
Gripped by winter
And freedom jumps the queue
To take fear’s place as our focus
Because he is risen

Because he is risen
My future is an epic novel
Where once it was a mere short story
My contract on life is renewed in perpetuity
My options are open-ended
My travel plans are cosmic
Because he is risen

Because he is risen
Healing is on order and assured
And every disability will bow
Before the endless dance of his ability
And my grave too will open
When my life is restored
For this frail and fragile body
Will not be the final word on my condition
Because he is risen

Because he is risen
Hunger will go begging in the streets
For want of a home
And selfishness will have a shortened shelf-life
And we will throng to the funeral of famine
And dance on the callous grave of war
And poverty will be history
In our history
Because he is risen

And because he is risen
A fire burns in my bones
And my eyes see possibilities
And my heart hears hope
Like a whisper on the wind
And the song that rises in me
Will not be silenced
As life disrupts
This shadowed place of death
Like a butterfly under the skin
And death itself
Runs terrified to hide
Because he is risen

Gerard Kelly

everything pushed together at once

I like this from the archbishop

disturbing the peace

If you thought that Easter was the Happy Ending after Good Friday, go and read Mark who will persuade you otherwise.