Monday 18 February 2013

The DAFFODILS are COVERED by...

... frosted crusts of yesterday's snows. Smooth rolling folds of white with the trace of green beneath; thin plumes of Spring's green fire. I have come here to wind the church clock. To climb those dusty steps that smell of old stone and the rough prayers of older days. To turn the windlass whose cold metal scorches the palms and fingers. And all the while the rhythm of my thoughts turning and turning...

I am on my to way work. I've been asked to take an evening lecture on the resurrection in the New Testament. For the last three or so days my head has been full of it.

But now, as I stand in this darkening churchyard with clumps of snow lying blue and cold in the shadows, I do not want to leave. I look at the ragged rows of gravestones and memorials standing slant and hag-like beneath the heavy sky. Each grave holding safe one who was buried with the promise of resurrection. Did they die with that hope in their dying hearts? That same hope that we will be dissecting and scrutinizing? Did those standing around the torn earth on that day ache with longing for that day of resurrection? Did they sit in kitchens, now forever quieter, the favourite cup ownerless and never more used, a chair now sitting empty, nurturing the hope that sparks when even tears have long since dried?

I do not want to leave. I want to hear those stories of the long buried and the dead. To hear what they knew of the resurrection and how tears might turn to laughter... and to know... to know why I, at times, find it so difficult to comprehend. My notes on cognitive dissonance and the enervating words of Bultmann await me in my car. My lecture feels too much like the 'strange fire' of Nadab and Abihu. Not because it contravenes some pale orthodoxy sealed by the machinations of synods, but that it tramples on something far more sacred - the last hopes of those in need of hope. There are times when my work wraps around my head too tightly. I feel that sense of disconnection and alienation from all that I hold precious and then I need to remind myself that I must come here. That I must stand beneath this shaggy yew and listen to the ancient stories that matter.

Darkness falls and it grows steadily colder...

Beneath the snow there are daffodils.