We had a really, really good Good Friday.
We started with an early (for us) morning and headed down to the church. Then we had an elicit exchange of dairy-free eggs and got ourselves sorted out for the Good Friday meditation we were taking.
We stole the script for the meditation based on the last words of Jesus from Kingdom Story
We ended with recording of the lovely Aled Jones (definitely getting middle aged, but he has such a lovely tone to his voice) singing Abide With Me (Martin’s favourite hymn) and this image that we took of the cross at St Benet’s Abbey on the Norfolk Broads.
Then we just had to hang about and prepare for being the final destination of the walk of witness, rearrange the chairs, butter some hot crossed buns, sort out the PA stuff, make some tea and coffee. But we had about 3 hours to do all this, Ruth took the little ones to the park, Rebekah and Jamie went for a coffee and we just pottled about in church, in quite an idle manner!
The walk of witness arrived, babies cried, songs were sung and lots of drinks and hot crossed buns were distributed.
Then we sat around for a long time with friends and coffee.
Next home.
Jonathan and I had cleared the area around the fire place and had made a cross from the sticks in the garden to put up.
I tidied up our cupboard surface with our Lent stuff on.
Jonathan updated our very behind lent lamb calendar
I put up the cross picture that I made.
I managed to find time to listen to the last instalment of the excellent Peoples Passiondrama on the iplayer. I read an article that said that religious broadcasting has almost disappeared around the Christian celebrations but I have to say that I have been very impressed with the variety, quantity and quality of the broadcasts relating to the passion on Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra during Holy Week.
We also have an Easter tree that Ruth went out to pilfer from the cycle path.
We had a leisurely afternoon spending some of it looking at Jonathan’s bouncing egg and making a lot of quiche for dinner (always a joint effort as Rebekah makes better pastry and I make a better filling) and rebekah also made a batch of truly delicious hot crossed buns.
We sat and ate a very very leisurely dinner, drank a yummy bottle of red wine (which we unfortunately now have to give a small share of to Rebekah) and sat and had a great lot of conversation ranging from theology, to holiday to moral dilemmas to parenting. The girls said some lovely things about us, but Martin said that Rebekah must have been under the influence of the wine!!!
We had a great day because there were lots of times to not be in a hurry, to sit and chat and take our time. It reminded me that we need to get back to being more idle and not to just rush and be busy all the time but to really slow down and appreciate the here and now, savour time with family and friends and time alone and with God.