Easter snow

Easter has now come and gone again, and talk of fixing the date or the weather will abate for another year. Of course such casual conversation allows us a distraction from the real Easter stuff that puts Easter at the heart of the Christian faith.

For me Christian spirituality is earthy stuff. It happens from the ground up and it is about down-to-earth things. Yes, of course the skies, the heavens and the heights are quite marvelous in their own ways but I beleive in life before death and therefore most of what I pray and write concentrates on the ground.

Take Easter Saturday, when we interred my mum's ashes in the churchyard at Hatfield Broad Oak. It was a day of four seasons with every possible weather. We dug the hole for the ashes ourselves and placed them in ourselves, and covered them with earth ourselves. Not so remarkable you might think, except that the British way of death has become increasingly removed from the living. Our sincere thanks to the dozen or so people who stood in the snow laden wind and joined in.

Earth to earth

Cover the earth with a blanket of snow;
cover it, cover it all
so that the cut of the spade
and the turned turf
are invisible again.

After the snow wake the earth gently;
wake it, wake it up
so that each bud
each leaf and blade
emerges fresh and whole.