http://cakebysadiesmith.co.uk/wp-content/ALFA_DATA I came down to the City to be with my fellow believers for Easter. I spent Holy Thursday with the Episcopalians, which was beautiful as always, and then Good Friday and the Vigil at a parish in Murray Hill.
http://smragan.com/tag/electrical/ The experience of worship during Easter season in the City is unusual. The Churches are full, and you feel that something of great importance to everyone is going on; and then you step outside, and the streets are equally full, of people who take no interest in the liturgical calendar at all. The general effect is feeling that you are part of some important club, which is as secret as it is important. There are problems to feeling this way, but it is hard to reconcile the intensity of the services with the indifference of the streets in any other way.
On Saturday, I stepped into a completely dark church to find the pews filled with people holding candles. Passing by the church you would think nothing was happening there – and yet it was the holiest night of the year.
On Friday, for the kissing of the Cross, the first man to do so in the Church bent down to kiss the foot of the Cross and fell flat on his face. He seemed to stand in symbolic relation to all of us at that moment. At the end of the service he came back up to the altar and literally crawled on his hands and knees to kiss the cross again. During the service I watched the hundreds of people come up to the Cross – people of every description, of every race, who looked like they came from nearby Bellevue Hospital and who looked like sexy urban professionals, people who looked like cleaning ladies and people who looked like bankers, all came up to kiss the Cross. I started crying just looking at it – knowing they all came as equals to this feast, and I no better and no worse than any of them. No doubt, I come to liturgies for this experience – for the experience of being one of many. It is a great relief, to be comfortable that way, after so much individualism.
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