Easter Sunday is strange when you aren’t feeling the big joy wonder of delight at hope returned. I remember big praise events as a teenager, the high of singing ‘Thine be the Glory’ loud and long whilst our vicar joined the band on the organ and soloed away with joy. But these emotions cannot be forced. If I love anything about Easter these days it is that all our stories are found in this big story and some years we need the aching silence and the jump to the joy can feel too much. For me this year Today means I can weep my tears of grief knowing that they are heard, seen, known and loved. There is a hope which is quiet and holds me on this course. Which is not loud and exuberant but gentle and tender.

I know that others will need and feel the big fat joy this year and I know that in other years I will dance in that to. This year though I stand with Mary in the garden and cry, asking where my Friend is and I gaze over the water with Peter in desperate longing that it really is him on the shore. 

I love Jan Richardsons book of blessings ‘Circle of Grace’ and this is unashamedly influenced by her beautiful words. (And the wonderful line ‘how it felt when you stood in the place of death and heard the living call your name’).

For all whom the joy is jarring

For all whom the grin won’t come 

For all who can’t find the hoorah 

On this day 

For all who ache 

For all who can’t see the way 

For all who the Easter Saturday has 

Not broken into sure certain wonder

For all whom the jump is too wide

For all who need to sit in tears 

For all who need courage 

To be wrapped in love 

And hear the living call their name 

In this place of death, 

In this lost, lonely landscape. 

May this hope breathe gently on you

May you hear your name spoken with love

May you taste the droplet of hope for the next step on. 

May you hear the invite of ‘come and have breakfast’ 

But if you can’t 

Come sit and be still 

May you know you can come,

sit and breathe for a while.  

In this silence. 

Waiting for the Dawn