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| Preparing bags of Maundy Money |
For us in government offices, Maundy Thursday meant the start of a lovely extra-long weekend off work. Most had a half day off on Thursday, then on Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon offices remained completely closed. In our legal-based office, even the following Tuesday was quiet, because in the city where I worked local lawyers, or some of them, following a peculiar local tradition, took Tuesday as holiday too. Easter was the longest and best best Bank Holiday of the year. Nowadays, in retirement, all days are much the same.
Easter. One doesn't have to be a devout Christian to appreciate the reality of resurrection and re-birth happening all around.
“In the oddity or maybe the miracle of life, the roots of something new frequently lie in the decaying husks of something old.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
“It’s hard to walk briskly at this time of year; the accelerating pace of unfolding spring slows my own. I repeatedly stop- to watch what’s moving. Soon the torrent of migrants will completely overwhelm my ability to keep up with all the changes. But it’s easy to revel in the exuberance and the sense of rebirth, renewal.”
― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World.
“There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?”
― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale.
“If anyone or anything tries to curse or kill the Goodness at the Center of all things, it will just keep coming back to life. Forever Easter.”
― David Housholder, The Blackberry Bush.
