Easter

A quiet time here. Easter Sunday always seems to start quietly, faintly, with the simple story of veiled women hurrying through the early sunlight to the tomb in the garden; the story is so immediate I can almost hear the birds and the city waking up around them. A Biblical story set at a particular time of day seems to have more immediacy, a further linking of calendar to theology. A peculiar Easter pleasure is lying awake on Easter Sunday before the house has woken and thinking about the women on their ordinary, colossal journey. And Mary Magdalene not recognising Jesus through her tears and mistaking him for the gardener; superb writing! And then this gentle, quiet story fades into the ordinariness of a Sunday, even one at Easter, much as the quietness of the garden fades as the women run back into the city. There is a theme in early resurrection stories of followers not knowing who Jesus was; the unnamed disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus walked alongside him without recognising him and only when he broke bread with them did they see him properly. Oscar Wilde said that at least once in his life every man walks with Christ to Emmaus.

In the afternoon we went to Dilwyn for a walk. Dilwyn is a quiet black and white village with an old pub and a village green and an ancient church. The history in the church was layered, with old walls being reused, the footprint of the building shifting over centuries, arches being half-bricked up, doors left to a rood screen cleared five centuries ago. It was quiet and peaceful. Much of the church history here is like this; mediaeval buildings with roots in Norman or Saxon churches which are open all the time but have services twice a month.

There will be less spiritual pondering from now on in this Journal; I suspect like a lot of people I get so far thinking about religious truth and no further; and when I think about it again I have to start again. But this is one of life's great thoughts, the relationship we have with our souls and the universe and the world around us; it is a spiritual journey in its own right. Too many people these days do not think about it at all - or maybe just do not think at all.