Right now I’m sitting at the computer at church waiting for the service to begin. I put together and run the slides on which we project the words to the songs and the sermon notes. So I’ll be here for all 3 services this morning.
This afternoon we’re travelling to my in-laws for Easter dinner. It will be somewhat melancholy, since my mother-in-law was just transfered into a full-time alzhiemer’s care unit in a nursing home. I expect she’ll be there with us this afternoon, and enjoying the time with all of us. But none of it will “stick” as the long process of decline continues.
I have just had lunch with the curate (we are on London time) which consisted of a simple meal of Moroccan chicken soup, beef pie and pear tart (all bought and cooked easily and quickly). Big congregations at 10 am and 11.30 am. Good attendance last night at Vigil, when we had an adult baptism. The church a sea of candles, glowing in the dark. Reassuring after the terrible battering the Catholic Church has been receiving in the media. In fact I even wondered if some people who were occasional attenders might be coming to show solidarity: attendances are up if anything. We still have an evening Mass ahead of us when I will be the celebrant. I am trying to resist the temptation to steal Abp John Sentamu’s sermon, posted by Kendall above.
We are getting ready for church where we will baptize three young people, ages 17, 21 and 30, into the life of Christ. As a church that has been hard hit by the venom of the past, we are proudly Anglican and beginning to grow in a new way and with open hearts and humility. There is a lot to be said about new birth today. Just as Jesus died for us, we had to die to the “old” church to become a new one. We are busy establishing new traditions on top of the old, and joyfully proclaiming the love of the Lord to all who come to our doors. So we enter this day with joy, hope, a glorious Easter service, the flowering of the cross, delicious food and of course the traditional Easter Egg hunt! Alleluia, He is risen, the Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Holy Thursday -free clinic – missed church
Good Friday – Church with sister and younger daughter
Holy Saturday – visiting a young inmate with elder daughter (the son of a friend of my elder daughter), He was busted for robbing churches last year, but underwent a conversion experience during his personal 6 months of “Lent” and looks forward to freedom in a few weeks, and I truly believe he will be a new creature. He is going to finish up his hs degree on line, and then get an electricians certificate and set up his own buisiness. He hopes to be baptised once he gets out.
Rest of Saturday was spent on homework for the middle schooler and the college student
Easter Vigil with both kids and sister. Mass was almost 4 hours long with 10 baptisms, 20 receptions into fully communion.
The college kid went back to college after mass (at midnight) to party with friends. We hit the sack.
Currently the younger kid is eating her chocolate easter bunny while entertaining the dogs.
I am cleaning up
My sister is cooking easter dinner. We will have both kids, the two of us, the older kids boyfriend, and a couple with a young daugther our younger kids age who are friends of our family.
It’s a recent tradition that we gather with dear friends– our daughter’s godmother & family, including her mother her father under whom I served my curacy– for a wonderful Greek feast: Lamb, tabouli, baklava, paska (sp?), Pinot Noir (very good with lamb!) and I can’t remember what else. But first the kids go on an egg hunt on their sheep farm, then Solemn Evensong in the grandparents’ chapel. Good food, good friends, and the Easter worship continues! Alleluia!
Hubby and/or I have been to church every day this week for our parishes holy week services. Today we sang (as part of the choir) at both services in our parish. This evening we will spend with friends feasting on roasted lamb and the fixings of our Easter feast.
Good Friday service, Easter Vigil last night. Today, a sick child (sore throat and fever) who hasn’t even had the desire to see what the Easter bunny dropped off. We’ll have our Easter dinner this evening, but it will be low-key.
We are at home today, here in SW Montana, the Continental Divide rising majestic and snow-splotched on the east side of town. We’ll have a wonderful friend, one of the pianists at our parish, over for the lamb dinner; I have wine set aside, but she always brings something perfect, almost the way our Lord knows just the right thing we need, even when we don’t know it ourselves. It is lower-key today than recent Easters; not intentionally, but happily. The kids are all teens now and help tremendously (and often without grumbling!), so our son removed the ski racks on the car, putting on the bike racks (we had our last ski day of the season yesterday; it was glorious) and the twin girls have helped with cleaning the house – and a little bit of the meal prep. One of them helped with our traditional Easter family photo, as she is developing a far better eye for photographs than her father’s.
The Resurrection Sunday service today was pretty full – not a bad feat for church held in a gym in an old school. The gaudy colors of the place were actually perfect for Easter Sunday – purple and yellow and blue. Our parish tradition is little bells of all kinds brought for this day rung by any and all at each mention of “Alleluia”, though the kids can’t resist the ringing throughout much of the rest of the service.
It is a glorious day, when even such as you and I are saved and brought back to the Father. Alleluia! (ring, ring, ring!!!!)
Up at 5 and out by 6 to get to Holy Cross, Valle Crucis, NC, 1:45 hours drive in the dry (last week 2:05 hours in the rain). 90 at 8:30, full church 140 at 11. Music at both, two trumpets and a trombone and new tracker pipe organ. Glorious service of resurrection with breakfast between. Interim begins in June. Home to rest and enjoy the resurrection.
At church at 9:00 for choir practice. The service at 10:00 was probably the best attended of any service we’ve ever held and there wasn’t a vacant seat in the pews. Some glorious hymns and Mozart’s “Glory to the Father” as the choir anthem. Excellent sermon from Fr. Brannen, and Fr. Royster was the celebrant. My wife, son and girlfriend, and daughter shared a pew with my sister-in-law and her daughter, all dressed in Easter finery. Following the service there was a scavenger hunt for the children throughout the church and parish hall with adults costumed as figures from the Passion story who handed out candy. After fellowship time with the parish family, it was home to the farm and up to my elder sister’s house (also on the farm) for a big Easter meal of grilled salmon, pulled pork barbecue, scalloped potatoes, green beans, potato salad, green salad, ratatoule (sp?), marinated asparagus, cooked cabbage, numerous desserts, and plentious wines, beers and spirits. My household plus children’s girlfriend and boyfriend, my elder sister’s household, including five English exchange students from my niece’s college, my younger sister and her boyfriend, my father-in-law and his wife, my sister-in-law and her two children, a visiting Saudi nobleman and his girlfriend here for the races at Keeneland, and a few old and dear friends of our families gathered for the feast followed by an Easter egg hunt on the lawn. Adults hid 180 eggs and then the “children”, all but two now in college with several graduating this spring, rushed around collecting them. They found all but ten! Then home for us where wife and I changed clothes and went for a walk over the farm while son and daughter headed off to girlfriend’s and boyfriend’s families for Easter supper. Then for me, a nap and a light supper late and to bed. Lovely day.
Right now I’m sitting at the computer at church waiting for the service to begin. I put together and run the slides on which we project the words to the songs and the sermon notes. So I’ll be here for all 3 services this morning.
This afternoon we’re travelling to my in-laws for Easter dinner. It will be somewhat melancholy, since my mother-in-law was just transfered into a full-time alzhiemer’s care unit in a nursing home. I expect she’ll be there with us this afternoon, and enjoying the time with all of us. But none of it will “stick” as the long process of decline continues.
I have just had lunch with the curate (we are on London time) which consisted of a simple meal of Moroccan chicken soup, beef pie and pear tart (all bought and cooked easily and quickly). Big congregations at 10 am and 11.30 am. Good attendance last night at Vigil, when we had an adult baptism. The church a sea of candles, glowing in the dark. Reassuring after the terrible battering the Catholic Church has been receiving in the media. In fact I even wondered if some people who were occasional attenders might be coming to show solidarity: attendances are up if anything. We still have an evening Mass ahead of us when I will be the celebrant. I am trying to resist the temptation to steal Abp John Sentamu’s sermon, posted by Kendall above.
We are getting ready for church where we will baptize three young people, ages 17, 21 and 30, into the life of Christ. As a church that has been hard hit by the venom of the past, we are proudly Anglican and beginning to grow in a new way and with open hearts and humility. There is a lot to be said about new birth today. Just as Jesus died for us, we had to die to the “old” church to become a new one. We are busy establishing new traditions on top of the old, and joyfully proclaiming the love of the Lord to all who come to our doors. So we enter this day with joy, hope, a glorious Easter service, the flowering of the cross, delicious food and of course the traditional Easter Egg hunt! Alleluia, He is risen, the Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Holy Thursday -free clinic – missed church
Good Friday – Church with sister and younger daughter
Holy Saturday – visiting a young inmate with elder daughter (the son of a friend of my elder daughter), He was busted for robbing churches last year, but underwent a conversion experience during his personal 6 months of “Lent” and looks forward to freedom in a few weeks, and I truly believe he will be a new creature. He is going to finish up his hs degree on line, and then get an electricians certificate and set up his own buisiness. He hopes to be baptised once he gets out.
Rest of Saturday was spent on homework for the middle schooler and the college student
Easter Vigil with both kids and sister. Mass was almost 4 hours long with 10 baptisms, 20 receptions into fully communion.
The college kid went back to college after mass (at midnight) to party with friends. We hit the sack.
Currently the younger kid is eating her chocolate easter bunny while entertaining the dogs.
I am cleaning up
My sister is cooking easter dinner. We will have both kids, the two of us, the older kids boyfriend, and a couple with a young daugther our younger kids age who are friends of our family.
It’s a recent tradition that we gather with dear friends– our daughter’s godmother & family, including her mother her father under whom I served my curacy– for a wonderful Greek feast: Lamb, tabouli, baklava, paska (sp?), Pinot Noir (very good with lamb!) and I can’t remember what else. But first the kids go on an egg hunt on their sheep farm, then Solemn Evensong in the grandparents’ chapel. Good food, good friends, and the Easter worship continues! Alleluia!
Hubby and/or I have been to church every day this week for our parishes holy week services. Today we sang (as part of the choir) at both services in our parish. This evening we will spend with friends feasting on roasted lamb and the fixings of our Easter feast.
The Lord is risen ! Alleluia!
Good Friday service, Easter Vigil last night. Today, a sick child (sore throat and fever) who hasn’t even had the desire to see what the Easter bunny dropped off. We’ll have our Easter dinner this evening, but it will be low-key.
We have four Harmons out of five this easter, with Abigail and Selimah here but our son at Boston University still at school.
We worshipped at Christ Saint Paul’s Yonges Island this morning and heard a sermon from visiting preacher Steve Capper from Mission Houston.
We are at home today, here in SW Montana, the Continental Divide rising majestic and snow-splotched on the east side of town. We’ll have a wonderful friend, one of the pianists at our parish, over for the lamb dinner; I have wine set aside, but she always brings something perfect, almost the way our Lord knows just the right thing we need, even when we don’t know it ourselves. It is lower-key today than recent Easters; not intentionally, but happily. The kids are all teens now and help tremendously (and often without grumbling!), so our son removed the ski racks on the car, putting on the bike racks (we had our last ski day of the season yesterday; it was glorious) and the twin girls have helped with cleaning the house – and a little bit of the meal prep. One of them helped with our traditional Easter family photo, as she is developing a far better eye for photographs than her father’s.
The Resurrection Sunday service today was pretty full – not a bad feat for church held in a gym in an old school. The gaudy colors of the place were actually perfect for Easter Sunday – purple and yellow and blue. Our parish tradition is little bells of all kinds brought for this day rung by any and all at each mention of “Alleluia”, though the kids can’t resist the ringing throughout much of the rest of the service.
It is a glorious day, when even such as you and I are saved and brought back to the Father. Alleluia! (ring, ring, ring!!!!)
Up at 5 and out by 6 to get to Holy Cross, Valle Crucis, NC, 1:45 hours drive in the dry (last week 2:05 hours in the rain). 90 at 8:30, full church 140 at 11. Music at both, two trumpets and a trombone and new tracker pipe organ. Glorious service of resurrection with breakfast between. Interim begins in June. Home to rest and enjoy the resurrection.
At church at 9:00 for choir practice. The service at 10:00 was probably the best attended of any service we’ve ever held and there wasn’t a vacant seat in the pews. Some glorious hymns and Mozart’s “Glory to the Father” as the choir anthem. Excellent sermon from Fr. Brannen, and Fr. Royster was the celebrant. My wife, son and girlfriend, and daughter shared a pew with my sister-in-law and her daughter, all dressed in Easter finery. Following the service there was a scavenger hunt for the children throughout the church and parish hall with adults costumed as figures from the Passion story who handed out candy. After fellowship time with the parish family, it was home to the farm and up to my elder sister’s house (also on the farm) for a big Easter meal of grilled salmon, pulled pork barbecue, scalloped potatoes, green beans, potato salad, green salad, ratatoule (sp?), marinated asparagus, cooked cabbage, numerous desserts, and plentious wines, beers and spirits. My household plus children’s girlfriend and boyfriend, my elder sister’s household, including five English exchange students from my niece’s college, my younger sister and her boyfriend, my father-in-law and his wife, my sister-in-law and her two children, a visiting Saudi nobleman and his girlfriend here for the races at Keeneland, and a few old and dear friends of our families gathered for the feast followed by an Easter egg hunt on the lawn. Adults hid 180 eggs and then the “children”, all but two now in college with several graduating this spring, rushed around collecting them. They found all but ten! Then home for us where wife and I changed clothes and went for a walk over the farm while son and daughter headed off to girlfriend’s and boyfriend’s families for Easter supper. Then for me, a nap and a light supper late and to bed. Lovely day.