The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Reflections on Easter, North of '53 The Rev. Janis Campbell Northminster Memorial United Church Maundy Thursday I'd have been fine if only my mind hadn't strayed to the faces of the people. Mental note: When serving communion, focus on the hands. On second thought, hands won't do. What speaks entreaty and betrays hard use and tells the tale of living more eloquently than hands? Try knees. Don't raise your eyes above their knees and then maybe your composure will survive the Words of Institution: "On the night before he died for us..." Good Friday "I'd never shout 'Crucify him!' No way - not me!" That's what she said. I guess we'd all like to think it about ourselves. Probably we all need to think it about ourselves. We also need to know that we are fooling ourselves. Holy Saturday Hours of bitter weeping are summed up in this day. And numbness. And all our worst fears. And our lowest estimation of others - and ourselves. As well as our despair that anything good or true or beautiful can hold its own in this "dog-eat-dog" world. Holy Saturday . . . Over my shoulder the sun is rising, its golden glow glittering back at me from window-lit houses along First Avenue. It is a harbinger of that other rising which happened once and for whose happening against we wait breath-held. Easter I wasn't counting on the frost. I can barely see through the windshield where it's cleared off just above the dashboard. It's hard to make your way in the dark when the visibility is poor. Yes, yes, Mary - you know all about that. And I know some of what you knew when I reach the rendezvous and they move toward me from the shadows, wafting like so many shades, the cold morning air charged with expectancy, and we sing and we greet one another in the name of the Risen One and beyond and around and within us there is a new day dawning. Alleluia!4/30/2004
