Easter Garden

Tags

Buscot Church, Easter, Easter garden, hope of resurrection, Three crosses

Buscot Church.  Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Happy Easter!

Tags

Christian persecution, Easter, Easter garden, Sri Lanka

Thoughts and prayers for all affected by the Sri Lankan attack earlier today.  Our happiness is mingled with grief and outrage at the inhumane treatment of our fellow human beings.  Father forgive them, for they know not what they do…

Photo by Candia

 

All Saints, Steep Good Friday

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All Saints Steep, Downs, Easter garden, Edward Thomas, Hampshire, kneelers, Laurence Whistler, memento mori, Reveille

Another re-blog as it is the same season…

Brassie and I set out one sunny afternoon last week,

to savour the fresh air and to visit Steep Church with its

memorial windows to Edward Thomas, the poet.

Imagine our shock at finding one of the exquisite little panes

shattered by vandals-apparently some time ago.

It made me return to my online file and I managed to find

a poem written about these works of art several Springs

ago.

Let me share it with you:

ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH, STEEP-GOOD FRIDAY

It is steep, but we find it after all

with memorial tablet on the wall,

listing old choirboys – Cranstone, Applebee,

whose treble piping trills continually

in shrill birdsong. Death’s head kneelers proclaim

memento mori. We don’t forget name,

or words from the believer whose etched glass

invites us to see less darkly, to pass

through the pain, through the pane, beyond the moss

of an Easter garden, with central cross,

till our gaze follows glaze to Downs and sky,

clouded momentarily by the sigh

of some Hampshire widow, for whom the coat

on washing line; the unsmoked pipe denote

an absent man and yet a spirit nigh,

the daffodils bugling in Reveille.