Seeker

This last day of Holy Week is Easter Eve or Holy Saturday. It is the day after Good Friday. On Good Friday Christians remember Jesus' crucifixion. Tomorrow the great celebration of Easter begins but if we try to rush into that joy too quickly I think we miss something important. We miss entering into the desolation and grief of Jesus' mother Mary or of his close friends like Peter, John Mary Magdalene and others. We miss sharing with all who this Easter weekend are mourning the death of someone close.  We miss getting in touch with our private griefs and sorrows and finding a way to express them. The deepest joy is that joy that comes after tears. Joy will come 'in the morning', but for today it can be helpful to find the space to pause, to stay in imagination with those who watched Jesus' burial and who grieved. This is how the writer of Matthew's Gospel describes Jesus' burial and the sealing of his tomb: When it was evening, the...

After my mother died, more than 2 years ago, one of the things I found hard was not having a funeral that included the presence of her body and its final committal for burial or cremation.  This was as a result of honouring her plan to donate her body for medical education and research for an indefinite period of time after her death. We held a Thanksgiving and Memorial Service which was beautiful and helpful but inevitably lacked the sense of closure that a burial or cremation can help to give. I wrote something about this last year in a post entitled ' On Not Having a Funeral '. Since then 'life goes on', the initial rawness of grief has passed. I can talk about my mother without crying. The memories of her last dying weeks are more balanced now with memories of earlier years. I have mostly avoided thinking about how long the wait might be until my mother's mortal remains are cremated, mainly because it is has been uncomfortable to think about  what medi...

Photo by Michelle Griffiths It's late spring in the UK and everywhere we see the miracle of buried seeds shooting green and producing flowers and more seed. The bright yellow dandelions around our way are particularly numerous this year. After a long cold winter they are a wonderful sight, even if I don't want too many in the garden. Yesterday, with many others, I took part in a Good Friday procession, following the cross along a high street. In the place where we assembled on a warm sunny April morning, we found ourselves in a seed cloud. Countless tiny seeds carried on the air were falling on us and around us down to the ground. They appeared to be dandelion seeds - I can't be sure. I remembered what Jesus had said about another seed, "...unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but it it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12: 24 NRSV) For Christians, today, Holy Saturday, is a day to confront the reality of...