Remembering the cross

Harry, aged 85, keeps this cross in his pocket. It was given to him 15 years ago by Constance, who died three weeks after she gave it to him. He keeps it in the pocket where he has his loose change and every time he puts his hand in his pocket he feels it there. It reminds him of his friendship with Constance, a disabled woman from Jamaica who he used to give a lift to church to each week, and of his committment as a Christian.
Baptised as an Anglican, he tried the Baptists as a teenager, before become a Presbyterian after the war, like his late wife, Ruby. Apart from when he had a virus last year for a couple of weeks, he never misses going to Waverley URC, where he is the oldest male member.

You can find plenty of these little crosses to make or for sale on the internet. As we approach cross-week I thought I'd make a video piece about crosses. I've been using some photos of crosses in the school assemblies I've been doing for the last few weeks. Today it was year 7 and they were a bit braver/less self-consious than some of the other groups, so a few people offered their views and opinions. On Friday there's an Easter bonnet competition.

Cross-wise Christ,
with us still
in love, loss and memory;
as we approach your cross-week
keep us mindful of you and each other,
in life and in death.

JAL: 01.04.2009

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.