GOOD FRIDAY

Good Friday reminds me so much of when I was a girl.  It was the start of  a busy
weekend of chapel going!  My family were members of a Methodist chapel.  It
was years before I learnt it was Primitive Methodist but whatever it went by, in
my memory it was full of singing and general happiness.  The Chapel has been
pulled down and my parents have gone but they have left behind lovely memories.
Reading the Bible so comprehensively as a child played a large part in
becoming a writer when I grew up.  Stories full of incident and colour and
characters swept through my life.  When I was sent 300 miles away to an Open
 air hospital school  for a year when I was 10, I found myself attending a Church
of England  Sunday school.  It didn’t matter because I met all my old biblical pals there
and on we went together!

GOOD FRIDAY 

So now it begins with the sun striking through the tall windows,
Onto the old brown pews and onto the pulpit,
Onto the slender Cross where the weight of this weeping world
Is carried on helpless shoulders,
Onto the crown of thorns blazing in the shadows,
Burning the darkness with its crimson glory. 

This is not a gentle day, yet gentleness persists in breaking through,
For the soaring arc of the wide blue banner
Painted on the far wall of the Chapel,
Painted high above the polished table where blue scented grasses
Quiver in a silver goblet, unquestioning and faithful,
Presents to us those golden words painted on that lovely blue arc,
Words that insist ‘GOD IS LOVE’
Which gently insist it is this we must always remember. 

The singing is bright now, pausing, darkening, lifting, soaring,
Until a sudden startling descant adds its own touch of glory
To all tough and tender hearts caught in a flesh
Ever subject to death and to corruption, yet ever open to joy.
These singers of sacred songs seek the strength of God as they sing
And in those three plain words, GOD IS LOVE, find it. 

Then the crisp cold air smelling faintly of lavender
Drifts like a prayer into the silence and the silence is profound
As silence always is when God is listening.
And God is always listening.
And love is always sending its quiet hope out into the world. 

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