Month: April 2020

Like a lot of people, I am using some of my lockdown time to sort out things in the house. Actually I had already decided to do that because my mother died last autumn, and making room for the stuff from her home we didnt want to give away or sell meant some de-cluttering was necessary in any case. But the peace of social distancing has encouraged me to go further with this than I otherwise might have done.

My bookshelves are full of books which I bought and never got round to reading, or read long ago and have forgotten about. One of the great pleasures of enclosure has been finding and reading or rereading some of these:

Sara Maitland’s book of stories inspired by the Stations of the Cross in St John’s Bethnal Green. I read Simon of Cyrene in my Passiontide meditation, but the others too are well written, and several moved me to tears. The story of Veronica is also deeply moving – it emerges she was the woman whose haemorrhage was cured by touching the hem of the garment Jesus was wearing, and so wiping his face was a small repayment for her healing. That will defintely come out next Lent.

A book written by a patient of mine twenty-five years ago when I was in London; I probably read it at the time but had forgotten all about it. I reread it and found it was a well written, thoughtful fairytale which like Tolkien or the Narnia stories tells great truths about the nature and purpose of life. I found the email address of the author on the web and got back in touch with her, to our mutual delight.

I found and re-read “The Hound and the Falcon” – a strange but fascinating set of letters by Antonia White, written during her return to faith in the early days of World War II. Some people have compared the current crisis to those times, but reading a contemporary account makes it clear it was very different and much, much more terrible – not least because it was unleashed deliberately by human beings on each other.

A E Housman’s “A Shropshire lad” was lodged between two scores in my printed music collection. How it got there I cannot imagine but finding it again I cant resist sharing one of my favourite poems in it:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Sorting out the CD’s has produced some finds too; Dvorak’s Mass in D I sang on a tour in Avignon twenty years ago – a lovely and underperformed piece. Underperformed too are the Bach Cantata’s which we bought as part of a very cheap box of his collected works some years ago. There are over 200 and many of them contain music as fine as in the Passions and the Christmas Oratorio which we hear regularly. I’ve printed off a list and hope to listen to them all in time, though we will probably have a vaccine for Covid 19 before I have finished them.

Not everything is worth keeping; the garage is slowly filling with boxes to go to the charity shops when they reopen. But I amrealising that by having fewer books, less stuff in general, it is easier to see and appreciate what I do have and to use it properly. Perhaps a metaphor for life in general.

This morning I found a book of French poetry which includes this gem I had never read before, by Marcelene Desbordes- Valmore whom I had never heard of:

‘irai, j’irai porter ma couronne effeuillée
Au jardin de mon père où revit toute fleur ;
J’y répandrai longtemps mon âme agenouillée :
Mon père a des secrets pour vaincre la douleur.

J’irai, j’irai lui dire au moins avec mes larmes :
” Regardez, j’ai souffert… ” Il me regardera,
Et sous mes jours changés, sous mes pâleurs sans charmes,
Parce qu’il est mon père, il me reconnaîtra.

Il dira: ” C’est donc vous, chère âme désolée ;
La terre manque-t-elle à vos pas égarés ?
Chère âme, je suis Dieu : ne soyez plus troublée ;
Voici votre maison, voici mon coeur, entrez ! “

Ô clémence! Ô douceur! Ô saint refuge ! Ô Père !
Votre enfant qui pleurait, vous l’avez entendu !
Je vous obtiens déjà, puisque je vous espère
Et que vous possédez tout ce que j’ai perdu.

Vous ne rejetez pas la fleur qui n’est plus belle ;
Ce crime de la terre au ciel est pardonné.
Vous ne maudirez pas votre enfant infidèle,
Non d’avoir rien vendu, mais d’avoir tout donné.

Very comforting for someone who often feels like a flower that is no longer beautiful.

When I decided to call myself “an involuntary anchorite” in my lockdown blog, I realised that it was either a joke (like a duchess calling her stately home “my little place in the country”) or immensely arrogant. Loretta lived in one room about the size of our parlour: I have two other sitting rooms as well as a bedroom and a garden in my “enclosure”. I have three or four hundred books to read – and can get more for my Kindle anytime I wish – whilst she would probably have had three or four at most – before the invention of printing even great monasteries would have fewer books than I do.

I also have a kitchen, which means that my life can include the practical pleasures of cooking and soothing physical jobs like washing up. Like any noble lady Loretta would not have cooked for herself even if she had access to a kitchen. Presumably she must have cleaned her own room as there was no-one else to do it, but otherwise her life would be a bit like living in a retreat house, with others taking responsibility for the practicalities of life.

I am sharing my isolation with my husband Yvan and Poppy – a delightful shit zui dog inherited when my mother died a few months ago, and an excuse for walks and a constant source of joy and amusement. Anchoresses were only allowed a cat, and as dog person I would consider that a very poor substitute. And I do wonder how they stayed healthy enough to live into their 80’s, as Loretta did. Despite taking Poppy for a walk most days when on the first nice day for weeks I went out on my bicycle for 20 minutes I realised that I had become seriously unfit. It will take a few months of trips considerably longer than the hour we are allowed before I am fit enough for that other great medieval activity – going on pilgrimage.

So like many people in the 21st century I am in many ways much better off than any 13th century noblewoman, let alone an anchoress. But there are similarities too. Loretta had a window through which she could talk to those who wished to do so, and a manservant who could take messages around the country; I have email and the telephone. Both are ways in which one can influence others – as we know Loretta did by encouraging the Franciscans. I’m not sure my messages will be as effective but the intent is similar.

Another similarity is the relationship to the mass; Loretta took part in it through a window into the church; I can share in the Eucharist through the screen of my computer. In both cases the participation is real but somewhat different from the experience of Communion we are used to. But actually our experience now is perhaps closer to that of most Christians at most times. For most of us these days when we go to the Eucharist, Mass, Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion – whatever we call it – we expect to share physically in the bread and wine. But although the Ancrene Wisse advises that anchoresses should “attend” mass daily, they are only to take communion 15 times a year. By medieval standards this was frequent communion – many Christians would only receive once a year. In Orthodox churches it is still common for a minority to take communion at most services and even my parent’s generation were taught to take communion once a month, usually at a service at 8 am.

It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, and whilst it would be wrong to say that modern Christians are contemptuous of the Sacrament, we do perhaps rather take it for granted. An important reason for infrequent communion amongst so many groups of Christians was not that they didn’t think it important (although that may have been the case with some Protestant groups who saw the Lord’s Supper as merely a memorial meal) but because they thought it was VERY important. Careful preparation was needed – by confession to a priest, or by careful “self examination” for those wary of that practice. And fasting beforehand was important too – hence those early services, with much discussion as to whether a cup of tea beforehand was legitimate or not.

Perhaps taking part in services online where we cannot physically take the Sacrament will make us appreciate it more when we can do so, and also understand that there are other ways we can participate in the heavenly banquet.

So – my first Easter in lockdown; though perhaps not the last, if the worst predictions about the virus’s ability to fight back – mutation, the possibility of second infections – is true. How different has it been from normal?

In a way it’s been busier. Instead of singing in the choir and preaching one sermon, on Easter Day, I was asked to write and record three reflections; on the Lamentations of Jerimiah for Holy Monday, on Foot washing for Maundy Thursday and on the Harrowing of Hell for Holy Saturday. We usually open our garden as a quiet space, and the Quiet Garden Trust who support us in this have asked for virtual quiet gardens, so that was another recording with pictures this time. So it felt as if I spent much of Holy Week on the computer.

When we got to Maundy Thursday I joined in the Bishop’s service which replaced the Chrism Mass in the morning, and the Mass of the Last Supper in the Evening. I kept the vigil in my bedroom with just a candle and the dog asleep on the bed (she is why it had to be in the bedroom – she would have complained if I’d left her alone in the evening!) after a short vigil in the garden – also with the dog, which was why it was short – she didnt like staying out in the cold! I was surprised to experience the same deep silence as at the Altar of Repose. I was able to “drop in” to St Mary’s Primrose Hill, where the vicar had made a small altar of repose in a corner of her house as well as read through the last supper discourse in John’s gospel – one of the most beautiful sermons every preached.

The realisation that I was part of the whole Christian world keeping the Tridium was perhaps the most powerful element of the experience of the three days. I was able to hear the Passion sung to Stephen Barker’s contemporary setting, but also the Passion of Victoria which I have been singing for 50 years sung by a virtual choir in Wakefield; the new fire and pascal candle lit in a North London vicarage garden, the Exultet sung by a friend who is a deacon in Deal, and the Eucharist celebrated in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s kitchen.

The other thing I have become aware of this year, writing reflections and watching different services online at different times, is that Holy Week and Easter are a unity As a singer Holy Week and Easter are always a bit muddled – you have to practise the “alleluias” of Easter Day before you have sung the “Hosanna”s of Palm Sunday and the “Crucify”s of Good Friday ( though I did hear that one choirmaster made his choir sing “Four and Ninepence” instead of the word “Alleluia” when rehearsing during Lent). But going through it in time at one church as we usually do it is easy to experience it as one Easter video suggests as a ”comeback” after defeat. But this is wrong. As one commentator on that video said “ Jesus didn’t lose on Good Friday, but was victorious. The world just saw it on Easter Day.” That’s something to think about during this next forty days whilst looking at the many passion meditations and expressions of Easter joy which have been posted this year.

Christ is Risen – Alleluia – a Happy Easter to all!

Holy Week has some great dramatic services : The Palm Sunday Procession followed by the dramatic reading of the gospel, the Blessing of the Holy Oils on Maundy Thursday morning or the Foot washing and Stripping of the Altar in the evening, the starkness of Good Friday – the church bare, the Passion sung, the Cross unveiled and venerated, the simplest of communions. And greatest of all the Easter Vigil, with the solemn reading of the Old Testament story of salvation from creation onwards, preparing the ground as it were for the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, the kindling of a fire, the lighting of the Pascal candle and its light spreading through the whole congregation the joyful proclamation of the Resurrection in the Exultete, followed by a cacophony of organ, bells and every other musical instrument leading to the singing of the Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

I will miss doing those at church, but if Palm Sunday is anything to go by the online service will be a reasonable if not ideal substitute. I certainly enjoyed waving my home made palm branches in the garden and putting them on the door as a sign that it was Palm Sunday afterwards.

But the thing I love best, and the thing I will miss most this year is the Watch after the Maundy Thursday Eucharist. Sitting in silence before the Blessed Sacrament . Sitting with others gazing at a piece of bread which encapsulates the mystery of God becoming human for us.

For some reason the silence is much deeper, the presence of God more tangible at this time then than at any other time of the year. I’m not sure why this is: Perhaps it’s partly sharing the silence with others; I had planned to go to a Quaker Meeting for Worship the first weekend that the churches were closed, and though I tried to spend the time sitting in silence listening to God it wasn’t the same on my own. Perhaps it’s because of the amazing service which has just happened, an emotional roller-coaster from singing the Gloria for the first time since the start of Lent though the foot washing which turns the world upside down, to the desolation of Psalm 22 and the stripping of the altars which ends the service. Perhaps it’s the effect of a pool of candlelight in a dark church, the smell of candles and flowers which honour the Sacrament and recreate the Garden of Gethsemene for us. Perhaps it’s that we are in a way in that Garden, where the bit of the Passion which for me is closest to our own experience; knowing something unpleasant has to be done and wanting to run away from it.

I’m not the only person to feel this is the most important part of Holy Week and Easter – someone described this time thus: ”In the candlelit silence in the chapel, seasoned with the prayers of generations of believers, sitting before the true presence of Christ, the radiant peace and gravity of Christ’s presence is palpable. The time here is markedly different from all others during the church year. “

The church sees the Watch as a re-enactment of that time in the Garden, and these days it ends with the reading of the arrest of Jesus from one of the Gospels. When I was young the Watch was kept on a rota through the night until the Good Friday Liturgy – a custom which perhaps originated in a concern that some evil person might carry of the Sacrament and use it for satanic purposes. Traditionally people try to watch for an hour, which always feels a bit like trying to outdo the disciples who fell asleep, and to whom Jesus said “ could you not watch with me one hour”? Sometimes I manage an hour, but more often like the disciples my flesh is too weak to last out that time.

I’m wondering how to keep the watch this year:

If the weather permits I might go into my own garden for a while after the Maundy Thursday service. That would feel like following the example of the disciples in a different way from usual. However April being the cruellest month, its unlikely to be warm enough to stay outside for an hour – and certainly not warm enough to go to sleep!

I may try sitting on my own in a dark room with just a candle lit – that might remind me of the atmosphere at the altar of repose.

These days I often wake up in the night – perhaps instead of trying to go back to sleep I can do a bit of watching then?

The watch ends with the reading of a gospel account of the arrest of Jesus: this year it is Luke 22.31-62. I think I will try to read this last thing before I go to bed.

The Church also provides a number of other Bible passages which may be read during the watch:

John 13.16-30
Psalm 113
John 13.31-end
Psalm 114
John 14.1-14
Psalm 115
John 14.15-end
Psalm 116.1-9
John 15.1-17
Psalm 116.10-end
John 15.18–16.4a
Psalm 117
John 16.4b-15
Psalm 118.1-9
John 16.16-end
Psalm 118.10-18
John 17.1-19
Psalm 118.19-end
John 17.20

I may try to spend part of the evening reading John’s last supper discourses – not sure I can cope with all those psalms!

A priest friend once told me he tried to pray for everyone he knows during the Watch – that sounds
like a good thing to do at this difficult time.

I wonder what it would be like to spend 40 minutes (the longest you are allowed unless you pay a fee) on Zoom with others in silence?


What do you think? You can add comments to this blog – please add your suggestions as to how to keep the Watch in this year of lockdown.

Also it would be good if you could tell us which bits of Holy Week mean the most to you, and any ideas on how to make them as real in this year of lockdown as they usually are.