Cross

Having never been sure how to pass Good Friday, this year is no different. There’s no plan. Sleeping-in a little is followed by holiday breakfast, the kitchen smelling sweetly of coffee and toasted fruit buns. I ponder my first, thinking of how hot cross buns are now common as croissants, 365 days of the year. A contemporary English novelist, slightly Barbara Pym, could have a character who gives them up for Lent. It’s plausible, I think to myself, though everyone knows Good Friday is the one day of the year. Even when they subscribe to No Religion. Once upon a time I put the day aside for domestics, cleaning all the windows, mopping floors, raking leaves. Was that guilt, or just me at a loose end? This year I resolve simply to read relevant passages from books, a form of meditation on the day. The cat Obsidian keeps me company in the backroom, curled up like the night sky. Mervyn Stockwood gives a sermon on the 15^th of April 1956, in Cambridge: “To-night we pass to the one service that Christ gave us, the breaking of bread, or the Holy Communion.” He’s talking about Maundy Thursday. We went there last night. The Washing of the Disciples’ Feet and the Stripping of the Altar is a service I attend whenever in town, the foreshadowing of everything that is about to happen. Perhaps it’s why I stand back from church-going on Friday: the reality is already upon us, too grisly to contemplate. We know it so well, from a lifetime. Who can look at an execution? Isn’t there a journalism policy about that sort of thing? Ronald Blythe shows up, quoting William Shakespeare: “The uncertain glory of an April day.” Seven words about Spring, but is that all? Meanings may multiply. Blythe continues: “Nothing can hide the shocking events of Holy Week, however: the arrest, the trial, the desertion of friends, the selflessness of women, the ancient rite of Passover. And thus the world should have moved on. Execution requires that it should.” An execution that is the ur-story x-ed across our cityscapes, as familiar to the unread as the well-read. Hours pass thinking about these little sentences. “Let go of your plans,” says Edith Stein. Another time she writes, “When you seek truth, you seek God whether you know it or not.” Some trees are turning yellow. The dryness of the earth will soon be covered with rain. In the afternoon we visit friends for open house hot cross buns, 11 am to 4 pm, “just drop in.” Carol will go to Tenebrae and Bridie to usher at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but I must come home to start sorting for family Easter. Later in the evening I will visit the website of All Saints Margaret Street London to hear the next Holy Week sermon from Rowan Williams. One sermon had to be read out because he was flown midweek to the Ukraine-Romania border to greet those displaced in a refugee camp.