Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Life has its magical times, and one of ours was the years at Trinity, Apalachicola where for all our years there, and excruciatingly for years after, I was very sure that Easter and Christmas did not happen any place but Trinity Church. It was magic. The liturgy, the music, the people, the happiness, joy, love. For one thing, Dick and Laura Macy were renovating the historic old house adjacent to the park in front of the church, and using some timbers from their house, I made a huge and wonderful cross that couldn’t have been too far from life size. We called it the Lenten Cross. Every year on Holy Saturday we brought it inside the rectory and Linda decorated it with lilies and ferns and other flowers and greens. It was beyond beautiful, breathtaking. Then before dawn Easter morning, together we lugged it (it was exremely heavy) out the front door, and down the sidewalk to the front of the church, and set it there, leaning, as the most exquisite imaginable proclamation of Easter. It is one of my brightest memories of our magical fourteen years there.

And the church itself, the sanctuary area around the altar and the reredos were so very beautifully decorated, sometimes stacks of Easter lilies with their wonderful aroma, some years mountains of other flowers over the altar, some years in the vases, the loveliest altar arrangements imaginable. There were other magical times and moments too, but our Easter Dawn trek with the flowered cross is one that’s in my heart this morning.

And then Mary Williams arriving with the most elegant, delicious and beautiful loaf of Greek bread, decorated with Greek letters proclaiming Christ, and dotted with maraschino cherries. I don’t know a word to describe it except again to say exquisite, sparkling, magical. We had lots of children at Trinity Church in those days, and coming eagerly to the altar rail for Communion, “Father Tom! Can I have a cherry?!”

Some moments are greater than themselves because you were there. And some things that you saw and experienced so vividly and deeply that years later you can put it all back together. And some hymns that you sang with people whom you loved more than life.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!

Truly risen!

Welcome, happy morning!

TW+

20150405 Easter cross at HNEC 32401 about six a.m.

Sunrise service on the deck in the park just below our balcony. Nice.