Have you a Good Friday tradition?
Holy Friday 10th April 2020
On an online meetup, a friend asked whether we have any individual Good Friday traditions. He spoke of his being Bach’s St Matthew’s passion. For the last 50 years on Good Friday, he listens to his original LP. My mind went to the walk I began 17 years ago when my daughter was 3 to Chantry Island. It is not far from where I live about a mile and a half. I discovered it by just walking and reading an adjacent sign. It is no longer an island in the sense we would think. There is a dry moat around it and it may have been surrounded by water at one time.
It is secluded and it has the feel about it that you are walking into it as if a living presence. It is alleged that Alban lived here in the 3rd century and that he gave refuge to a Christian priest in what then was Roman Britain. When the authorities came to arrest the priest Alban disguised himself as the priest and was taken instead. He was then beheaded in the nearby Roman town of Verulamium.
His heroism earned him the title of Britain first Christian Martyr and the town renamed itself, St Alban.
The video records my thoughts while there.
Whether you are Christian or not I do believe we can all think of people who made sacrifices for us that enabled us to live the lives we have. There is an universal message in the Christ story which is about when called upon we will make personal sacrifices in order that others benefit from them.
I received news in the evening that my daughter’s maternal grandmother had passed from this world. Death had shown its face to me personally on Good Friday reminding me that we are here for a time and then we move on. ‘Mum’, as I called her, in the time I knew her showed me the love of a mother and even after the divorce we remained in relationship.
She had come from Jamaica in the 1950s to London and here she lived most of her life. Yet just as her accent never left her neither did the Jamaican culture in which she was raised. She always had food in the pot and Carnation milk in her tea. It was her saying when something would come upon her unexpectedly, “Lawd Jesus Christ” that remains with me and I often now exclaim. I still have and wear the many vests she bought me. I always thought of her when I would put them on and knew she was close to my heart.
In another way I think that she would have been glad that she passed on Good Friday, to have died with Christ and to rise with him on Sunday. Farewell ‘mum’ and thank you.
best day,
g
