Thinking on Good Friday

Good Friday. A difficult day - what an understatement, really, if you think about it. Sun and sudden warmth, a fat bee raising clouds of pollen on the catkins which the blue tits had just vacated after a morning's swinging: all this life, this rebirth contrasts with the stark interior of the church, the bare altar, the cross alone in the middle of it, the brass eagle lectern lying as if in sorrow on the front pew ...

How often have I experienced this strangeness? I suppose for me it's maybe been 36 years since I sang the Reproaches in the Cathedral of The Isles, wondering at the mystery of it all; I can have missed perhaps one Good Friday service since then. And the strangeness is compounded, always, by the unheeding world down the hill, in the town, and nowadays in the online community. It used to upset me; perhaps it's something you just become used to because now I merely observe. And this year, as always, I thought of Auden's poem Musee des Beaux Arts, which points out that suffering is always going on somewhere, unnoticed by all but those most closely involved.

So today I'm thinking about suffering, and about all innocents who suffer despite - or maybe because of - their innocence.

In the midst of life...

Snuffed
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Yesterday I referred to the feeling of headlong movement through Holy Week, and wondered at the time what it would feel like to be still and contemplative during this time. But when I consider this idea, as I did in fact have time to last evening during the Maundy Watch, I realise that perhaps the experience of breathlessness is closer to reality. St Mark's gospel has Jesus teaching, as it were, right up to the wire - right up till that last supper with his disciples he is teaching, countering argument, vigorously doing what he has been doing throughout his ministry, but with what looks like renewed urgency.

And then there is the prayer in the Garden, after which the guards come and he is taken off to face a hasty mockery of a trial. Within 15 hours, say, he is dead on a cross. In our tradition, we ponder on sign and symbol, we celebrate beautiful liturgies, we use music and silence to help our prayers. But of course it wasn't like that. Perhaps we should celebrate our liturgies in the supermarket, or in the main road, with people staring curiously or shouting abuse or merely tutting because we're in their way and they want past. Perhaps then we'd feel some of the pain of rejection and lack of interest; perhaps then we'd know what it feels like suffer intensely while the uncaring world gets on with its life.

Auden, in his poem Musee des Beaux Arts" makes the point " That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, " - while life goes on all around it. I have just told a bemused cold caller from somewhere far to the east of here that no, he couldn't speak to either of us because it was Good Friday and we were otherwise engaged and not wanting to buy insurance or a new phone system. He hung up without further ado and I came back to finish writing this. Life going on.

And now I shall wander up the road to church and have some silence.

Note: There is a new poem on Maundy Thursday over on frankenstina