Cold cloudy and damp once more today. There were over fifty of us at St Catherine's for this morning's Eucharist. The children performed a short and simple nativity pageant at the end of the service. Half of them are under five, so it was a wee bit chaotic, but nobody minded. It was just lovely to see them take part in performing together for the rest of the congregation, some of them for the first time in their lives I imagine.
After lunch, I went for my afternoon walk, returning before sunset. Once it was dark I found the link that Sara sent me on St Lucy's Day for watching the 'Lucia Morgan' recorded concert on Swedish TV, as she's done over the years. It's a lovely musical occasion with children's and youth choirs, a barbershop singing group and a duo playing violin and nyckelharpa, which is a Swedish bowed instrument about the size of a viola with a keyboard to press the strings down on the neck as finger normally do. It's also called a keyed fiddle or key harp. It's an instrument I've never seen before.
It takes place, or is meant to take place before dawn in candlelit darkness. It's the Swedish equivalent of a carol service and an initiation ritual event for young girls especially in their schooling. I don't suppose it happens at the crack on dawn in schools! It was a delight to see a sprinkling of snow in Sala where it was filmed this year - a location where there was once a historic silver mine, a site populated by historic buildings. As I was watching, Sara sent me a message and picture from St Andrew's Gothenburg, where she and Gunnar had joined the congregation for the Anglican Nine Lessons and Carols service. As a port city facing Scotland across the North Sea, it's not surprising there's been a chaplaincy there since 1857, six years before St Peter and St Sigfrid's Stockholm, a testimony to maritime trade routes back then I guess.
After supper we watched the Antiques Roadshow, then I read for an hour and a half before early bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment