Easter this year has been a powerful experience, something I haven't felt for a few years, not that Easter and Passiontide hasn't been special, but perhaps having to miss the physical presence and experience in Church last year due to lockdown, this years participation has seemed more powerful and intense, something of a surprise to my perhaps locked down, jaded mentality.
In the last year having to be locked down and excluded from my in-person Reader Ministry has had a huge impact on how I have lived for the past few years since I became an Anglican in 2008, and particularly since my training for and involvement in active ministry.
I was unable to give as I had wanted, and than in July I was presented with a new, life changing situation when my spouse suffered a stroke, which I witnessed and reacted to on auto pilot, phoning 999 for an Ambulance, because I had recognised the classic signs.
The golden hours were there, she was in an acute stroke unit within an hour and given the treatment which gave her the best prospect of recovery. But I had initially face the prospect of losing her, and than, thank God, knowing she would recover, but would be changed in ways, that would impact her ability to function as he had enjoyed previously.
Cutting a long story short, she has made a really good recovery, and I am attributing that to her own inner strength and determination and a bit to the prayers and lament that I offered and for the many prayers of others for her recovery. God, I am sure was involved in the healing. She is left with a ban on driving, and some right side weakness and a very slight speech impediment, but both of these are improving with time. She went back to work in November for two days a week, was promptly furloughed and has only resumed work this past week.
I was able to resume in Church presence in October, and have been able to support the ministry team in Church consistently every since, despite the closure for two months after the post-Christmas lockdown, we kept streaming services from Church, rather than from the Vicarage.
I am a fan of Reflective practice, I just with that I was better at it. I normally write notes in a journal, which record what is going on, how I am feeling and what I am praying or hoping for. Sharing some of this can be an emotional experience, so I am quite sparing in how I share, Apart from this blog.
This leads me back to Easter 2021. This year, we have been vaccinated, which I know we are fortunate to have, when so many have not, but also it isn't a passport to relax and return to normal. It has been an Easter and Passiontide like nothing I have experienced before. We had a covidsafe Palm Sunday, Holy week provided Stations of the Cross, led completely differently in a contemplative service, streamed online, Maundy Thursday a BCP Holy Communion with the Passion Gospel and a Liturgy of Maundy Thursday, where I had the privilege of having my feet washed by the Vicar and was permitted to preach. We were unable to hold the vigil or watch, due to restrictions and guidance.
Than today, the Liturgy of Good Friday, much stripped back. One hour of the liturgy with communion and again the Passion Gospel.
Somehow, all of this has been intense in a way that as I said, I haven't really experienced since the early days of returning to faith and becoming an Anglican, when I felt excitement as I experienced the seasons of the year, while at the same time, discerning a vocation, which eventually, after twists and turns ended up in Reader Ministry. Somewhere along the way, perhaps I allowed it to get all to familiar and because a bit of a habit, rather than a experience of power and grace.
I have to thank God and the Holy Spirit for that. After the disappointment of 2020, after the experience of enforced lockdown, after the experience of trauma and anxiety following the stroke, something changed at the start of Lent, something clicked into place. I attribute that to many influences, but chiefly to God's Grace, which has healed, transformed and mended a shaky, routine faith and revived it to the excitement of that first experience of faith in 2008. Thanks be to God.
