Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colours, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke
It really is, isn’t it? Sometimes Easter’s so early, and maybe it is a bit late this year, but at least we have had some real spring weather to bring the blossom out, and if we’re very lucky just maybe we’ve said goodbye to winter which, although the weather experts assure people hasn’t been cold overall, felt pretty bleak to most of us.
Mothering Sunday
April begins with Mothering Sunday on 3rd – an All Age Eucharist when the fathers prepare flowers for the children to give to their mothers. The following week the choir will be performing extracts from St John Passion in place of Evensong and then on Palm Sunday afternoon there will be readings from the King James Bible to mark its 400th year. Literary Hour on 20th will be readings of particular relevance to Holy Week.
Holy Week and Easter
As well as all this, of course, we have our usual services for Holy Week and Easter, following the story from the distribution of palms on Palm Sunday to the Celebration of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday, the Liturgy of the Passion on Good Friday, the Service of Light on Easter Eve to the Resurrection on Easter Day. The times of all these services are in the Diary. Attending the whole series, immersing ourselves in the story, imparts a special meaning to Easter that jumping straight from Palm Sunday to Easter Day somehow doesn’t convey, although of course not everyone has the time to come to everything. And if the clergy look a little dazed by the time we get to Easter then bear in mind that the preparation for and performance of all those services is pretty demanding.
Everything makes way for Easter. The days after Christmas are St Stephen [26th], St John [27th], Holy Innocents [28th] but nothing is allowed to interfere a week either side of Easter so this year the beginning of May will see a whole pile-up of religious days which you might notice are conspicuously absent at the end of April. St George, for instance, takes the 1st May this year, a day usually reserved to Ss Philip and James, who have to wait till 3rd because St Mark [ moved from 25th April] takes 2nd.
Spring Fair
And we’re busy in the church after Easter too with the Spring Fair on 7th May. This is our big fund-raising/community event of the year when we all work together to raise as much as we can for the charities we support as a parish, a list of which you can find further on in this issue. Every 3 years the PCC commits to supporting certain charities with certain amounts of money – then the money has to be raised through such events as the Fair and special collections [Christmas, Easter for instance].
The Raffle
We’re delighted to have a very special raffle prize this year: A week in a Luxury Apartment in Villefranche, Cote d”Azur, South of France – an anonymous and very generous donation by a parishioner. AND a Kindle AND an iPod Nano Ok, I’m not entirely sure what an iPod Nano is but I’m assured it’s a great prize – and I know and love my Kindle!
BBC Singers
Although I don’t like jumping ahead too much to May there is another event that you need to note now: the BBC Singers will be recording a live concert here on 25th May and tickets [all free] will be available on their website http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/shows/tickets/date/ soon. There is no other way of getting tickets. So please, if you want to come, start looking out for booking to open later this month.
April
Judy East