Palm Sunday

A marker for Spring, an event in the Christian year. I am a vague and uncertain believer but I love and (I suppose) partially revere the natural world, so I love the connections between the natural cycle of the year and the Church calendar. Rooting the needs and dates of the Church in ancient rites and festivals was political - but also poetic and beautiful. The old rites have surfaced through centuries of Christianity in this country, as if rubbing it away, so that many people who are in no way Christian 'celebrate' Christmas with a tree, family parties, presents; more a celebration of Yule, a festival of lights at the darkest time of the year, than a commemoration of the birth of Christ. And now we approach Easter, the age-old celebration of the return of the sun and the arrival of Spring. I must admit I love the dark austere beauty of Holy Week with its staged violence and its despair; and the connections between Resurrection and sun-return - and the anxiety, the uncertainty of it - are haunting and magical. The hedge-rows here are full of daffodils and the bank on the old toll road has careful lines of them, planted methodically but strangely; why straight lines? I have seen primroses in the verges as well, and small crocuses pushing aside the dead grass. And we have the daylight for longer and longer each day.