Early in the morning
Early in the morning on the first day of the week.
Sleep patterns being what they are in lock down times, for several mornings running I have heard the first birdsong. The same individual begins, greeting the dawn spectacularly and melodically. Except that there is no light yet. All is dark, yet this herald knows the darkness is ending. It is not yet light, but it will be so.
On his iPad in Normandy, David Hockney sends a message to an isolated world. “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring” is a depiction of the kind of daffodils you get for a pound a bunch, so ordinary and ubiquitous you could pass them by without a second glance. Yet, in the darkness of lockdown, isolation and shielding they are the herald of dawn. Spring will come.
I wondered how Easter Day would be in lockdown. Passiontide, with its lament and despair, seemed right. How could there be resurrection? My 5.15 herald of dawn had an answer. It is dark, but light will come. Hockney’s daffodils have an answer. “You can’t cancel the spring.” As the sun shone directly on the church down Church Row this morning there was an answer: flowers picked on permitted walks from the churchyard and round about, beautifully arranged outside a church we cannot yet enter.
The first resurrection was only glimpsed. Jesus was mistaken for a gardener. The emptiness of the tomb was too much to take in. Most initial responses were all about fear, bewilderment, unbelief. It took time for the early herald of light, Mary Magdalene, to be proved right. She is my 5.15 am singer of the greatest music: “I have seen the Lord!”
Resurrection will be celebrated in isolation today, and it is still dark in this pandemic. But light will dawn. You can’t cancel resurrection.
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Jeremy