The Experience

On Friday we began this year's offering of the program called Benedictine Experience. It's a program that offers people the opportunity to come to Holy Cross and live the life of a Benedictine monk for eight days. They work and play and relax with us, and they reflect with us on their experience - and, of course, a big part of that is thinking about what all this might mean when they get home after the program is over.

Benedictine Experience was invented by our friend Esther deWaal, the author, when she was still in Canterbury, and the very first BE (as we call them) to be offered in an actual Benedictine monastery was here at Holy Cross, back in the mid-1980's. Since then we have offered this experience each year, with the exception of our Centennial year a few years ago, because we were celebrating that. Twenty-eight years is an extraordinarily long life-time for a program.

Each year we have some 'Benedictine groupies' who come (and some years ago they invented the nickname "monk camp" for the BE) and make this week their annual retreat. Each year there are new people, of all ages, and quite a mixture of social status, race and even nationality. Some people who come to Holy Cross to experience the Benedictine Life decide they really want this life for themselves on a permanent basis and are now brothers in our community. Some years the group is large (I think 27 is the most we have had) and some years it's small (6-8) but on it goes. This year the group is small and all but one are men, which is very unusual. Two of them come from outside the United States. More than half are priests. One of them was a member of the very first Benedictine Experience at Holy Cross all those years ago. So all of this makes for a different group than the usual one. For one thing, they talk a lot more, and they are comfortable communicating in groups.

Of course, the main thing the group does is to follow our liturgical schedule. They have seats in the Church that are arranged choir-wise, facing each other, like the monks' seats in Choir. They take turns reading the lessons at Matins and at Vespers (which produces the usual crises when there are Hebrew or Greek words to be pronounced). They get some idea what it is to live a life that is framed by prayer, and this is one of the chief reasons that they come.

But all of the rest of the elements of our life are there as well. Each morning they spend time in meditation together, with instructional sessions led by one of the brothers. Then there is a class, which is always on some aspect of the Benedictine life, and this year is about the Rule of Benedict and how it applies to our - and to their - life. During the afternoons they do manual work - outside, when the weather permits, and inside at other times. They will typically work in our flower gardens, in the library, in the church and sacristy (applying a coat of oil to our wooden life-sized crucifix in the Church is one of the yearly features), at house cleaning or sometimes in the kitchen. When possible we have them work together in small groups, so they get to know each other as the week goes on.

One day of the week that they are here, they have a 24 hour period of silence, for retreat and prayer and reflection.

At the end of each day they gather with members of the community to reflect on what the day has been like, what joys or difficulties it brought them, and what they may be taking home from this experience. It's in this gathering that we come to know how the Benedictine life has been working on them. Though they don't always report that their experience has been one of uninterrupted joy, it is almost always a creative and satisfying time for them. Last night, one of them said that the thing he valued most was that "this place is alive". That certainly made my heart glad, because that's my experience, too.

Each year I feel that this is one of the best things that we do all year long. It's also one of the most natural things we do. We are just sharing - sharing who we are, how we live, what we think, what our life is like. That is a very natural thing for the members of Holy Cross to do. It also takes quite a large amount of energy. To live this closely with people who aren't an actual part of our community, and to live with the intensity that this week demands uses a lot of our capacities to the full. Also we don't get our usual Monday day off, which interrupts our usual pattern of living, and there is a price to pay for that. When next Saturday comes and they have departed, most of us will be exhausted.

Over the years, Benedictine Experience has spread far and wide. It has especially taken root in this country. There is a group called The Friends of St Benedict, and they sponsor Benedictine Experiences in a number of places in the United States, with a variety of formats. I have conducted a BE for them in North Carolina and next spring I will be doing one in Virginia. Other of our brothers have done these programs in California and in Texas. They are wonderful experiences, and in each place a real community develops as a result of living the Benedictine pattern of life. But we still offer the longest of the BE's, and we do it in the context of the actual living of the Benedictine life in a monastery, and that makes our offering unique.

And BE expresses the overflowing of the Benedictine life that Holy Cross is particularly devoted to. We are always trying to figure out how this life can be offered to others. In BE, and in the Quiet Days that we offer to poor people with AIDS, and in our series of Bach Vespers, and in the retreat we did some time ago for formerly homeless people, and in the space we offer for the Ulster County Mental Health Coalition to come together to reflect on their lives and their work, in the countless parish groups that come here for weekends and in the gatherings with local clergy that meet here, Benedict's "little way" comes alive again and works God's love in this world.

What a nice thing for monks to be doing!

Of Oil and the Holy Spirit

One of the pleasures of living in the community of Holy Cross Monastery, at least for me, is the consistent creativity with which we approach our celebrations of the liturgical year as well as other events of our lives. We like celebrating and we do it well and when something has worn thin, we aren't afraid to say "this isn't doing it" and to look for better solutions.

And so, a number of years ago, we decided that our usual celebration of Pentecost "wasn't doing it", and we wanted to look for a liturgical 'container' that would really celebrate the Feast of the Coming of the Holy Spirit, which marks the end of the Easter season. We started with several meetings in which we talked about what we wanted to celebrate - what are the themes of Pentecost, what would be like to emphasize? Of course the event itself - the Speaking in Tongues first given to the Apostles - was major. And then what our attention focused on was the movement of the Spirit-life of Christ from the historical person of Jesus into the Church. Pentecost is intended to be a mark of the birth of the Church as a body that lives Christ's life and continues Christ's ministry. This seemed to us to be what we wanted the liturgy to express for us.

How to do it? Balloons wouldn't make it, for us. Neither would a birthday cake. We thought and we brain-stormed and then we planned. We came up with a ceremony with which we were pleased. It "worked". But of course it wasn't perfect on the first go-round, and so for several years we did some more work on it and fine-tuned it. In the end we created a celebration for Pentecost that really does, for us, express the feast.

It goes like this: the liturgy begins like an ordinary Sunday. Then, just before the reading of the lesson from Acts, one begins to suspect that something is up when several members of the community leave their places and go to stand in various spots around the Church. The reading of the descent of the Spirit on the Apostles in the Upper Room begins as usual , but when the story gets to the point where "they began to speak in other tongues" a whisper, a murmur, comes from around the Church. It sounds something like the "rushing wind" of the Biblical account, and it's composed of those stationed around the church quietly reading the story in different languages, as the reader at the lectern continues the story. This murmur of sound continues to accompany the reading until the end. This year we had the reading in Latin, Greek, German, Spanish and Italian. In some years we have had more exotic choices, like Walloon, Finnish, Ga and Fanti, but this is what we had available this year. It's quite an experience. Even though I know what's coming, and often enough I'm reading one of the alternate languages, it still gives me goose bumps and makes my hair stand on end. This imitation of the event of the coming of the Holy Spirit is quite amazing. It is the sound of mystery.

Then we go to a large glass bowl in the center of the Church, which is filled with olive oil. We bless the oil, recalling the Biblical use of anointing to convey the presence of the Holy Spirit, and ask God that we may be "drawn to your heart, transformed by your love, and sent forth to your world as signs of your kingdom." When the blessing is complete we all anoint each other. Someone puts his finger in the oil and traces a cross on my forehead and says: "Bede, may God's spirit live in you." And then I turn to the person behind me and anoint them and so it spreads through the congregation, each of us being "ordained" once again, to have the risen life of Christ and to live it in the world.

Then we float seven wicks, or sometimes seven candles, in the oil, and one of us goes to the Paschal Candle, which has burned since Easter as a symbol of the resurrection life of Christ, and brings flame from that candle and we light the seven candles, naming each one for one of the traditional gifts of the Holy Spirit -

the spirit of wisdom,
the spirit of understanding,
the spirit of counsel,
the spirit of might,
the spirit of knowledge,
the spirit of the fear of the Lord,
the spirit of love.

And while we are doing this, in the background - usually quite unnoticed - one of the monks puts out the Paschal Candle. When the seven lights are lit and we look around again that massive candle stands in our midst unlit. Easter is at an end. The gift has passed to us - we are now the paschal candle, the gift of Christ's life to the world. The seven lights burn through the day, until Vespers closes the Feast, and with it, the season of Easter. It's now up to us to keep that light burning in this world.

There is a special Eucharistic Prayer for this day, with which the sacramental bread and wine are consecrated. It recalls how the Spirit has been experienced throughout the history of our people - Jewish and Christian - and asks for the power of that Spirit for all of us. And so we end our worship, renewed and sent forth again into the "Ordinary Time" of the days and weeks after Pentecost.

It's a great celebration of this day, and a real renewal of our call to minister Christ's life to this world. It's a privilege to live this feast with this community.

Life Goes On - and forward

We had two joyous events this week, one very public and celebratory and one private and more understated.

The public event was the First Profession of our novices Randy and Joseph. As generations of Benedictine monks have done for more than 1500 years, they stood before the altar and read their Instrument of Profession, which they had written out with their own hands, committing themselves to our life of Obedience, Stability and "The Conversion of My Life to the Monastic Way of Life", in this case for one year.

Randy's Monastic Vow in his own hand

If they decide to persevere in this life they will make this promise again in another year, and perhaps more than that, but the renewals of the vow are not public happenings: they are private community affairs. Then finally, if they feel completely called here, they will have a big celebration when they make their vows for life.

It was a wonderful time: not raucous, but very joyful. There was a nice crowd of their friends and friends of the monastery, including companions in our life from several different religious orders. These events are always as much about the past as they are about the present, as those of us in vows are always transported back to the day when we made the same commitment, and are inevitably rolled through the years that have gone by since then. There was good music, including a wonderful display of the capacities of our new organ, and then there was a meal, which Joseph and Randy had chosen, of fried chicken, biscuits, collards and banana pudding with "'Nilla Wafers". There was also a quite splendid sermon by Br Scott, which you can read on our OHC Lectionary Blog, if you would like.

We haven't had a double profession in many years, and when you add this together with the approaching profession of Br. Daniel in South Africa and the clothing of Br. Josias, also in Grahamstown, we have a lot to celebrate. Daniel has lived here in this monastery for much of the past year, so we will be sharing the joy of this event in a close way. All of this is a particularly rich promise of new life for our community, and it brings with it all of the happiness and also the "stretching" that new life, new expectations, and new ways always brings. We have a lot to celebrate and a lot to grow into.

And that growth was evidenced in the second joyful event to which I referred - which was a perfectly ordinary House Meeting that took place the day after the profession. The agenda had a number of items on it concerning the living of our daily life - how things get scheduled, how we can handle a growing guest ministry that sometimes threatens to overwhelm everything else in our lives, and some proposals for changing long-established customs, like the ringing of the tower bell. These are things of varying degrees of importance for us, and you may not be surprised to know that it is the smallest ones that sometimes produce the most tensions, and I have seen some wondrous conflicts over very small agendas in my years in the Order.

The thing that I celebrate (and not only I) is that we negotiated all of this with quite natural ease, with good humor and with creativity. We ended up making some decisions that were more imaginative and more helpful than any of us would have thought of by himself. We can now see our way to a significant expansion of week-day programs in the Guesthouse, knowing that we have drawn some good boundaries which will insure that the community gets the rest, and the sabbath, that it needs. Tensions that came up were honestly and quickly dealt with. Differing views were respectfully received and held while we search for solutions. We took time and care with each other and reached some really good resolutions. And this, no less than the professions the day before, gives wonderful hope for our future. If we can continue to grow in this way of discernment when issues come before us, we will forge a future that will be full of hope.

So, many Alleluias are due this Eastertide, for now and for the coming days and years.

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Just so regular readers of this column will know - I leave on Wednesday for some time away. I'll be in Kansas City, where I lived and worked for several wonderful productive years, and where I have a lot of connections. I'm looking forward to the time with much anticipation. I'll be away from this blog for the next two weeks, and look forward to being back with you after that.

A Rainbow of Monks and Nuns

This week we had one of the periodic meetings of CAROA (The Conference of Anglican Religious Orders of the Americas) here at Holy Cross. This is the association of traditional religious communities of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. At times it also includes the Caribbean and South America, but presently we don't have much presence there, except for one house of the Sisters of St Margaret in Haiti and a fledgling Franciscan community in Brazil.

What a collection we were, and what a sight! There were monks, friars, sisters and nuns (some day I may discourse on the fine points of difference between all of these). We came from 20 different communities and in all sorts and manners of costume. There were people in black habits, there were people in white habits, there were people in brown habits, and in gray habits and in blue habits. There were even two people in a black and blue habit. There were nuns in very traditional veils, and sisters in modified veils and those in quite traditional habits but no veils. There was a Franciscan in a traditional habit with red and black checkerboard sneakers.

There were more different sorts of crosses than you can imagine.

And there were brothers and sisters in secular clothes as well - smartly tailored outfits with discrete crosses which are different for each Order, and much more informal clothing as well, sometimes in colors that indicated the community and sometimes just plain old clothes. And there were some sweat shirts and jeans, some with crosses and some without.

Some wore different things at different times, and there was no guarantee that different members of the same community would be dressed in the same way (though most were). The 50 or so of us who were gathered here made quite a sight.

We're much more comfortable with this variety than we were at one time. At times in the past, members of the Conference could be very touchy about who dressed in what and at what time. Now that concern has faded and we seem willing to accept the decisions that each of our communities has made about our dress.

That's not the only thing that has changed. I've been in and around these meetings for more than 40 years. They were not always occasions that one looked forward to. We've been through times when our sessions were very brittle and touchy. There have been times when there were subjects that couldn't be mentioned, and when the sense of threat and competition between communities was pretty high. I've been to meetings when a sense of superiority and judgmentalism reigned supreme, and meetings when the only things that could be discussed out loud were so deadly boring that it was hard to imagine why we went on with these sessions at all.

I wasn't part of the official meetings this time - other members of our community have taken over that. But I know many of the people who were here and have known some of them for a long, long time, and I know what I sensed as I talked with them at meals and socialized with them at other times. My sense was that this was a very blessed and creative time. The topic this time was the care of the elderly in our communities, and it's a topic that is of great importance for all of us. Most religious orders have more elderly members than can be cared for by the younger members of the order. Some have no younger members at all. How do we provide care with skill and dignity and still empower the the active members of our communities to engage in a vigorous ministry and a full exploration of their spiritual path?

This is not a small matter, and my sense is that the Conference pursued it in depth with very little defensiveness and no sense of hidden secrets. There was a gentle sense of cooperation and support about this meeting, and of people who were genuinely glad to be working together. The whole household had a very good feel to it this week.

To work together on a common issue which is of great importance to us all and on which we are not all agreed, and to do so with love and commitment to each other and a sense of support for each other - this is quite a task. It's even more of a task to succeed in such an undertaking. Our house was full of this during these days, and we were blessed. One could wish for such a blessing for the Episcopal Church, and for the Anglican Communion, and for all of Christianity. Wouldn't it be amazing for gatherings of Christians of very different sorts to be like this?

Those who participated in the meetings worked very hard. Those of us on the sidelines, who provided support services, and socialized and reflected together with the delegates worked hard, too. And when noon came today and they were all gone and it was just the 16 members of Holy Cross Monastery present for dinner, it seemed like such a haven of peace and restfulness.

We are very tired right now. We're even going to take some extra time off in the next couple of days. But I'm very glad this meeting happened, and that it happened here. The Conference of Anglican Religious Orders of the Americas has something to offer the wider church. Over the years we really have learned how to love each other. And we've learned at a deep level that our commitment to Christ is more fundamental than the things that try to separate us.

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If you follow this column regularly you may want to know if I'm still bumping into walls. Thankfully, I'm not. There is still brain fog, but it's less. The antibiotic hasn't wrecked my intestines. I need more sleep than usual, but I'm up and working. And the terrible pain that affected my ankles and knees the last time I had Lyme Disease has not reappeared. So on I go. We'll see where I have gotten when a month of treatment is over. And my doctor is one of the people who developed the protocols for treatment of Lyme, so I'm in very good hands.

The River Flows...... And the Present is Always Here

Last week I quoted a saying from an old Zen acquaintance about how the River often flows in a different direction than we expect, meaning, of course, the River that carries us along through our lives. Last week the River shifted suddenly and unexpectedly, and that shift went on happening all during this week and gave me an experience of the Present Moment that was far different than any experience I had ever asked for - or than most people would want, I suspect.

The long and the short of it is that I have been too optimistic for the past 4 years when I say, as I did last week: "Antibiotics took care of it." In fact, it appears that they didn't take care of it. What the current dose of antibiotics revealed was that I didn't, as it turns out, get rid of the Lyme Disease at all four years ago. It is still with me.

It happened like this. I did, finally, get the antibiotics last Sunday and begin taking them. All was well - I know from experience that the probiotics that I also take will mostly keep me from the usual unpleasant effects. But there was a surprise waiting for me. There I was, in my office at night, wrapping up the day and getting ready for bedtime. And I was suddenly struck by what I have since learned to call "brain fog". The chief experience was of being trapped, as the phrase describes, in a thick fog. I wasn't able to think much or plan at all. I was quite lost. All this was accompanied by a great weakness, so I didn't have much in the way of resources to deal with it.

I realized this was going on when I tried to turn off the light and go to my room for bed. It took a moment to come to the reality that I didn't know where my room was. "This is silly, " I said to myself, "my room is right down the hall here" and promptly ran into a wall. So I started in another direction, and ran into another wall. I couldn't get anywhere. I couldn't even figure out where "anywhere" was. So I stepped back into my office. "Focus" I thought. I couldn't. I didn't have the energy. It was too much.

I had the grace to realize that this probably had to do with the drug, and would probably pass, so I sat down in my chair and thought I'd use the time to write to one of my closest friends, to whom I owe an email message. Only I couldn't remember his name, so I couldn't bring up his e-address, and I couldn't think of anything to say anyway. So there I sat. All I had was the present moment - there was nothing else available. Well, I thought, I might as well be where I am, so I sat there, in the night (which I love) being where I was, living with a small intuitive sense of God's presence and a larger sense of my dilemma.

Finally it lifted a bit, and I got myself down the hall and into bed. The next day, as you will expect, I called the doctor who summoned me immediately, which was no surprise. "Oh yes," he said "you apparently didn't get rid of the last case of Lyme at all, and the antibiotic has stirred that up." The brain fog turns out to be my body processing away the waste products of the battle it is fighting with the old case of Lyme. The dose of antibiotics is now larger and will last longer, and I'll have some more attacks as the time goes on. With any luck I will finally get rid of the Lyme Disease. My doctor, who is a renowned expert in Lyme, will keep close watch on that.

And I continue to be thrust unexpectedly into the present moment, with no other resources. At Compline a couple of nights ago, I all of a sudden realized that I was in the second half of one of the Psalm verses and had no idea what the first half of the verse had said. It was a different experience from the drifting away that we all experience in liturgical ceremonies - it was as though the first half of the verse had never existed. So, knowing what this was, I thought: "What's more important, the part of the Psalm where I am now, or the part that I have already said?" and finished the Psalm, not having any idea what it had said, but able to let it locate me before God in the process. And many of the Psalms talk about being confused and lost anyway, so that sense is just an extra added benefit. I can be confused and lost before God.

Let's not make this any more dramatic that it is. I'm not suffering dreadfully because of this brain fog. I'm being well taken care of by my doctor and if I can't remember where my room is, one of my brothers will take me there. The community knows what's happening, and they will compensate. I don't even feel bad, except for the weakness that strikes at the same time as the fog.

I have, however, been delivered into a more intense experience of the present moment than I ever counted on. I never really considered until this week, that when I said "the present moment" I was meaning "the present moment accompanied by all of my memories and potential distractions". It never occurred to me to wonder what the present moment would be like if it were devoid of all my normal mental processes and capacities. Now I know. It's disconcerting. But it's not bad. And it does have God in it, which is the major point. The one thing I'm not robbed of, when I'm in the midst of one of these attacks, is my ability to sit before God where I am.

There is more reflection to be done on this experience, but that will have to wait until my reflective capacities have returned. The succeeding episodes haven't been as severe as my first, but these fogs do appear at times and then I know that all I have is right now. That is something that I am going to want to keep, whatever the future brings.

The River Flows......................

A Zen Master whom I knew for a while used to say that some days "the River flows in a different direction than we expect". I got that today.

This morning in the shower I saw a scab on my arm that wasn't there the last time I looked. But it wasn't hard enough to be a scab. When I looked closely it was a big, fat tick busy enjoying himself (or herself) on my blood. I've had Lyme Disease once, and I don't want to do that again. The antibiotics dealt with it fine, but my ankles and knees were in pain for months afterwards, and my mobility was really limited.

So off to the phone and my doctor's answering service. The PA who responded to my page said three weeks of antibiotics (and a probiotic as well, to keep my intestines from getting very cranky). He would phone in the prescription.

So I went to breakfast and mass and then off to the Pharmacy where the prescription was waiting. So I thought. Oh yes, it was there - had been there since 8 am. But nothing had been done about it, and it was an hour and a quarter before they could produce the drug. Then off to the Natural Food Store for the probiotic, only that store was closed for Sunday so I had to go to another town to find an open one. I got back 10 minutes late for lunch.

And now I have to leave for Connecticut where friends are waiting for me. So this is what you get from me this week. Some times the River flows in another direction. I hope that strikes you as a worthy spiritual observation, because it's what I have to offer today.

Alleluia!

So, it's Easter Day, and I live in a monastery. What is there to talk about except what has been happening during Holy Week? I'll offer you what I have this morning - a collage of memories from the Great Three Days.

MAUNDY THURSDAY:
The most pointed memories of this week come from Thursday. This is because the ceremony is new to us. We have moved almost all of it into our Refectory (Dining Room), so we have the Foot-Washing, our evening meal and a simple informal Eucharist around the tables. It's very different from a High Mass in the Church: it's simpler, more informal and more intimate. We like it a lot.

Early in the meal I turned around to get some page of the Liturgy that I needed and there was the full moon - the Paschal Moon - rising over the River. I stopped and looked at it for a while. To my left was a young woman whom we have known, along with all of her family, for many years, and she said quietly: "One of my earliest memories is of seeing the full moon through that window." And I thought: "Oh, my." I have been here for a lot of years, but I was a well-formed adult when I came here. I just thought for a while what it would be like to have always had this place in your consciousness. What does it mean to a life if one of the first things you remember is the moon through the Monastery window? I had a moment of very deep gratitude for being able to carry someone through life like that.

The foot washing was quite wonderful, as it always is. For me it is a tender moment that I am always grateful for, a chance to act out for all to see what it is like to reverse my role from authority to servant. I cherish the moment when I take those feet and bathe them - feet that belong to my brothers, to friends, to guests that I have known for years, and to people I have never met. It's a moment of remarkable intimacy.

Maundy Thursday foot washing
Originally uploaded by Randy n/OHC

The supper was pleasant; simple and Middle Eastern-ish, and with good conversation. The Eucharist was simple. On this particular occasion the celebrant doesn't give Communion to each person, the bread and the wine are passed from person to person around the tables. We feed each other with the body and blood of our Savior. Communion transformed the atmosphere of the whole ceremony. As we came towards the end of feeding each other, I all of a sudden realized that the light cheeriness had gone. Suddenly there was something I can only describe as a deep Presence in the room. It was in us and it was beyond us at the same time. It was powerful. Once again, the Next World had broken through into this one.

After the meal and the Eucharist were ended we went in the dark to the Church where several of the brothers slowly and formally stripped the Church of all its decoration. The rugs came out, all of the candles were blown out and removed. The altar cloth went, the sacrament had already disappeared from the Tabernacle, all of the icons on the walls were covered. Everything that says "this is a place that living people use" was taken away. We were left with a cavernous and nearly empty space. It is an experience of desolation, a stripping that is both symbolic and deep. After it was over, the congregation didn't move. The silence was profound. It felt like everyone was stunned. They probably were. An hour later there were still a dozen people in the church, as still as statues.

Then we watched through the night. This year we kept the All-Night Vigil in a room by the front door. We have usually used the Crypt under the Church, which is a wonderful place for the Watch, but this year the heat isn't functioning down there so we needed an alternative spot. I never even thought about one of the great changes that made: one of our friends who is wheel-chair bound has not been able to take part in the Vigil for many years because of stairs. This year she could. I kept the Watch between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. and spent a good deal of the time in gratitude for what our accessibility project has made possible.

GOOD FRIDAY:
The Adoration of the Cross; once again, this is where I get choked up. That great long line of people coming to the foot of the Cross. All those people, so many of whose lives I have shared for a long time, coming to our plain wooden cross to kneel or to stand before it, to kiss it or to touch it or to press it to their heads, or even, in one case, to wrap themselves around it. How can one do that with such a symbol? How can one not do it?

The reading of St John's Passion: we have six people scattered around the Church who take the roles of the people in the Bible story of Christ's death. The old, familiar story, the details unfolding little by little once again. People shouting: "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!", and then pausing ever so slightly as it strikes them what they have just said.

The quiet of the day. It doesn't seem right to talk much on Good Friday.

And, of course, EASTER MORNING. The place was packed, just like Christmas. But this is a completely different crowd from Christmas. The Christmas midnight mass attracts a huge variety of people, many of whom will not be found in a church until the next Christmas. We are one of the places in this county where such people feel comfortable and know they will be welcomed. It's a great ministry.

But no one with a passing interest in religion gets up to be here at 5:45 a.m. on Easter. This crowd are the core believers: the ones who know that liturgy truly changes your life and come here to be changed. We lit the fire, we listened to all the good old stories from the Hebrew scriptures - the Creation, the Flood, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Crossing of the Dead Sea,the Valley of Dry Bones. And as the stories ended the sun rose over the hills beyond the River and we paused for a moment and gazed at that ancient and primary symbol of the Resurrection of Christ - the rising sun (or Son, as some of the ancient texts have it).

When we renew our Baptismal vows we bless a large bowl of water and we all get to splash in it, and of course some of us are more vigorous splashers than others. My sharpest memory of the Vigil is the feel of cold water over my head, refreshing me, and reminding me of that big tank I was baptised in more than 50 years ago.

And we rang bells, and we shouted "Christ is Risen" and we sang "Jesus Christ is Risen Today". And we went to breakfast, everyone full of joy, every one with their own memories of these three days, everyone changed in their own way. These are the most powerful three days in the year around here, and it is such a privilege to share them with all of those who come to be touched and transformed along with us.