Easter Vigil

This evening was at Holy Trinity in Dunoon for the first time in more than two years.

The service was for the Easter Vigil and the First Communion of Easter, which also includes the lighting of the Paschal Candle as the first light, which is then brought into the church .

I have over the years become only an irregular attender, as much questioner as believer.  I read this later and found it expresses that feeling about this season better than I can.  As ever the poet of such positive, hopeful doubt is the Welsh priest, R S Thomas and it has also a very contemporary, it seems to me, image at the end.


Resurrection  

Easter. The grave clothes of winter
are still here, but the sepulchre
is empty. A messenger
from the tomb tells us
how a stone has been rolled
from the mind, and a tree lightens
the darkness with its blossom.
There are travellers upon the road
who have heard music blown
from a bare bough, and a child
tells us how the accident
of last year, a machine stranded
beside the way for lack
of petrol, is crowned with flowers.