It is Holy Week, which, according to Wikipedia, in the Christian church, is the week between Palm Sunday and Easter, observed with special solemnity as a time of devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ. The week begins with Palm Sunday, and continues with Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday (Spy Wednesday), Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday), Good Friday (Holy Friday), and Holy Saturday. With this in mind, many people over the years have asked “what is good about Good Friday?”
How appropriate a question for the Holy Week we are facing….in fact, after three weeks of social distancing, even from immediate family members, I too am searching for something “good”.
In the Gazette of Monday, April 6, some of you might have read the beautiful words of Kitty O’Meara. For those of you who did not, I think it appropriate that I share them with you now. May they be the “holy” in this most difficult of Holy Weeks, and the “good” in the Good Friday we are walking towards.
And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed. - Kitty O'Meara.
In times of uncertainty and darkness, there have always been those among us whose creativity is stirred, who gift the world with life-saving medical technonlgy, those who step up to the plate, risking their own well-being to serve others, or those who are merely the calm in the storm and the pillar of strength within their own families.
I encourage you to take heart. In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address (in 1933, the height of the Depression): ”the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Let us be wise enough to leave this to God, knowing we are loved in spite of ourselves.
In peace
Beryl