State of Alarm - Palm Sunday

Today was sunny and mild, good weather for Palm Sunday processions which won't take place due to the ban on all religious processions and public worship across Europe and many other parts of the world. At breakfast time I listened to the BBC Radio 4 act of worship, a service of the Word from Farm Street Jesuit Church in London's West End. Our friend Gail's opera singing daughter Lisa used to be one of the regular professional choristers there in one of her younger days. Although the music for worship was recorded, it was well chosen and beautifully sung. 

Both officiant and preacher spoke about St Ignatius encouraging people meditating on the Passion to put themselves in the place of Jesus suffering on the Cross rather than looking at him suffering. They linked this to consideration of everyone suffering from covid-19, to remind us of the Lord's solidarity with us in all that we endure in this mortal life.

After finishing Morning Prayer and Ante-Communion (as we used to call it way back), I watched the Facebook recording of Mother Frances celebrating the Eucharist at home in Victoria Park with her partner making the responses. She started by walking into the house in full vestments with a palm branch over her shoulder, a nice touch I thought.

As ever, I talked with Clare, Owain and Kath on WhatsApp, and did my 10k around the garden, then joined the Chaplaincy Prayer group again on Zoom this evening, before saying the evening office. Then I worked on preparing and recording the Holy Week address for tomorrow. Sarah is recording the readings for me again, and the files will be edited and sent to Dave for uploading tomorrow. He's told me that the chaplaincy have agreed that they'll pay my weekly stipend for as long as I have to remain here. 

The continuing impact of the pandemic means that the State of Alarm is going to be extended until the time I was expecting to leave. It'll be a good while after that before normal means of transport and reduced infection levels make it possible to travel. I just hope there will be some time when I can meet again with the congregation for public worship, and maybe get out and see some more of the island. Solveig says she has some interesting walks in mind for then! 

Not really having anything specific to look forward to makes each day somewhat tougher going than it might be. All last year I spent far more time waiting for the next operation than I did recovering from any of them. I am far more used to waiting now than at any other time in my life. One good thing about having to slow right down and accept confinement is that I notice each small change in the environment, in the weather, the wildlife day by day, even more so than all the months I spent walking different routes around Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields, and up to Taff Trail. This afternoon I saw a beetle the size of a tablespoon sitting on a boundary wall where some of the growing number of lizards congregate in the sun. No idea what it is, but it had an exotic looking carapace.

State of Alarm - Day eighteen

Forty years today since the Bristol St Paul's riots happened on confirmation night with Bishop Freddy Temple at St Agnes Church, when Amanda was confirmed. Very little mention of this in the news media, and not surprising considering the worries of the world at the moment. It's been good to write about those events in recent months. I'm glad I did. There may be more to write eventually, when there's more time to reflect on those days. I dropped an email to Paul Bartle-Jenkins, the NSM priest at St Agnes who was my churchwarden there in those days. I had a surprisingly quick but very brief acknowledgement thanking me for my message, telling me nothing about how things are with him at the moment. I wonder if he is sick or recovering from sickness?

More clouds, rain and lower temperature today, disappointing after yesterday. I did the first half of my daily 10k before lunch, then Jayne arrived with a big order of groceries I'd asked her to get for me. I missed her message while I was out walking, and wasn't expecting her until tomorrow, so it was a pleasant surprise to be restore food stocks. I have enough to last me until Easter now, even some dark chocolate!

After lunch I made a video recording of the Palm Blessing ceremony in the dining room, suitably arranged, with the Sony HX300 perched on top of the desk. I got the alignment correct, checking by taking stills with me standing in place using the timer. It only half worked however, if I remained in position, but I took a step towards the camera and this cut off the top of my head during recording.

This camera is starting to worry me. I love its long zoom and balanced handling, but it's started to produce the same error message as spelled the end for the HX50 which died fifteen months ago. It's a code which indicates a problem with the zoom extending mechanism being slightly out of sync.

It may be wear and tear, as I have zoomed with it a lot taking seven thousand photos with it in the three and a half years since I bought it. It's possible to get rid of the error message with a little physical manipulation of the camera without the battery in it, but it returns when the zoom is used and the extending of the zoom gives tiny crunching sounds, as if there's grit in the barrel. I think it means the camera is doomed. And while I'm here, there's little chance of getting a replacement, let alone a repair done. Alas! So if it works it's on borrowed time.

I'd forgotten the video recording is in 16x9 format and not 4x3 for still pictures which means the image frame isn't as tall. It will have to do however, since the 1.2gb ten minute video file took two hours to upload to YouTube, after one failure wasting an hour's upload time. I used the waiting time to complete my day's exercise, albeit indoors, as it had started to rain. 

Uploading would have been fine first time if the Chromebook had been by the router in the office, but it was in the dining room where the signal is generally adequate, but can be variable, probably because of signal bounce or load demands. Next time, optimize, optimize connectivity!

After supper, I made a sound recording of the Book of Common Prayer 1662 Communion rite to use with the audio of the Ministry of the Word which I recorded and edited yesterday. Checking and editing that is a job for tomorrow. I'm much too tired tonight.

State of Alarm - Day Seventeen

A slightly warmer day today, clouds and wind, but no rain. I finally got around to giving my fleece a much needed wash, plus towels and a nightshirt and they all dried beautifully. Two swifts flew past this afternoon, so maybe more have arrived and will start feeding nearby soon. The sun has brought out into the open many more lizards in the two places were there are stone or concrete surfaces for them to warm up in the sun. I've seen lots of fast moving little brown lizards, small than the large green backed lizards, more than a hand-span in length, are the smaller ones juveniles, a different gender from the larger ones, or a different species? I have no way of knowing at the moment.

On the side of the fourth step down from the terrace last night, I noticed a tiny snail stuck to the wall, the size of my little fingernail. By this morning it had relocated itself to the pillar on the corner of the terrace, a metre above surface level. An impressive feat of climbing for such a tiny creature in twelve hours. I wonder where it's heading and what it expects to find there?

All the time I had to spare after domestic tasks and exercise today was devoted to making an audio file of Sunday's Ministry of the Word. Sarah and Clare contributed readings, but I felt strange about having to record the St Matthew Passion reading on my own, when every year just about, since I was ordained, I have read this in conjunction with between three to six other speakers, plus a church congregation acting as Jesus' lynch-mob. It sounds very amateurish, the best I could do under the circumstances. It's for a unique occasion, and won't be required another time. Hopefully it will do the job, just this once in history.

Strange, but I haven't come across any April Fool stunts on the radio today, although Clare did send me a short video of so called King's College Cambridge male choristers singing in place of the boys by using helium to raise the pitch of their voices. But then at the moment there are lots of parody videos in circulation and some hijacking popular melodies to sing lyrics about covid-19 and coping with a pandemic. Amazing what people do with time on their hands, to entertain themselves and others. Just like me really, I suppose.

   

A Palm Sunday, both typical and untypical

Our Palm Sunday Eucharist at St George's this morning was attended by group of thirty visitors from Sir Roger Manwood's School in Kent. They were, in fact the school orchestra, who'd earlier in the week played two concerts in Granada, and after our service played for us in Malaga. Three of the youngsters took part in the readings for the day, and several took Communion as well. There were altogether sixty of us.

Instead of the Year B St Mark Passion, we used a dialogue version of the Passion that uses passages from other other Gospels as well - useful for anyone wanting to preach on Jesus' Seven Last Words, for example. I preached the concise sermon I'd prepared, without straying too much from the script, and we finished at our usual time of 12.15 giving the orchestra three quarters of an hour to get ready for their performance.

Not all those who attended the service were able to stay on afterwards for the concert, but a sizeable number of people came in off the street, and we had an audience of forty, which is remarkable, since the poster advertising the event only went on display last weekend. We were treated to a variety of music, classic and contemporary, and various instrumentalists we showcased in different pieces. One of the violinists is also a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral. She sang a Handel duet with a flautist, and showed that he is developing a voice that will be more versatile than a treble of either gender.

I was glad that I bothered to prepare a big pot of soup for lunch beforehand, as I was starving by the time I returned to the apartment around three. At four, I made my way into the Old Town through the road tunnel. It was closed to traffic, as the road around the Plaza de la Merced was occupied by a Palm Sunday procession, from San Agostino Parish Church, featuring a trona that depicts the Triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and a trona of Our Lady of Holy Protection, cared for by the 'La Pollinica' cofradia. 

Hundreds dressed in the dramatic coloured garb of penitentes, children and adults alike formed the procession, and the band of drums and brass numbered over fifty people. The juxtaposition of church ceremonial and imagery, the music, the drumming at slow walking pace and  the use of bells to communicate messages along the 500 metre line of the procession, I found powerfully moving to witness in a secular everyday context. Normally, the stories we hear in the liturgy we internalise to take them away with us into the rest of our lives. Making those stories visual in public clashes our inner and outer worlds together in a stimulating, challenging way.

After following this procession for half a kilometre, the sound and then the sight of another emerged at a crossroads, beyond where the first one turned off, so I went to investigate. Coming down the hill from the Plaza de Capuchinos was the procession of the cofradia del Prendimiento, whose trona depicts the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, plus Peter's denial. This was followed by the trona of Our Lady of Great Forgiveness. In Spain I find there are so many titles of dedication relating to Blessed Mary I've never heard of before.

I followed this procession for a while, then headed through side streets to Calle Marquesa de Larios, where I watched the passage of a trona depicting Simon of Cyrene taking up the cross of Jesus, but I couldn't figure out from the handy little processional scheduling booklet which cofradia this one was or the trona of Our Lady following. Then I went to the Alameda and watched the arrival of the trona of the cofradia de la Humilidad aka 'Ecce Homo' as it portrays a tranquil Jesus bound, being presented by Pilate to the crowd, with a fierce, chained Barabbas raging in the background.

By this time I'd been walking around for over three hours and was beginning to feel tired, so decided to head for the apartment for supper, and a chance to digest the extraordinary experiences of the afternoon. My unfamiliarity with the many life sized sculptured images on display meant in each case that I needed to look long and hard to work out what each was portraying. Sometimes it was a scene combining several actions, other times a snapshot of a momentary detail in the passion story which an artist had meditated on and extracted a lesson for the beholder. Catholic tradition has many detailed devotional commentaries relating to the Passion, both popular and obscure. Giving life to them in the form of three dimensional religious art-works is a huge feat of creative imagination, whose development spans centuries. and continues today.

My photos from today's processions are here

  

Summer time starts

Over the last three days Clare has been making steady progress and getting used to coping with her immobilised shoulder. The pain hasn't been too bad, but the anaesthetic after effects have been quite unpleasant - nausea, dizziness, fatigue - and we get the impression this could go on for some while. We've gone out for a short walk each day to get some fresh air, longer each time. Exercise makes all the difference. There have been emails, texts and phone calls to take her mind off the symptoms, not to mention the challenge of one handed typing.

Allan and Lynne visited yesterday afternoon and Lynne took charge of changing her wound dressing. It all looks good and healthy, testimony to the care taken by the surgical team. Owain came over from Bristol for a couple of hours in the evening, with a large bunch of flowers to cheer his mum. 

As I've also been feeling quite tired with extra tasks to perform, I made a point of putting the clocks forward in the early evening, rather than wait until it's my usual bed time, and end up losing an hour's sleep. It worked quite well, and I woke up more refreshed than I usually do on this particular weekend when summer time begins.

Clare didn't feel well enough to come so I went to church on my own, joining a congregation of over a hundred at St Luke's for the united Benefice service of the day. It was great to see so many children there with their parents, and to see two other retired clerics who help out in the parish, sitting in the congregation. The day was overcast. It rained and as a strong wind gusted, the usual procession from the hall next door, up the street and back to church was exchanged for an indoor circuit - the first time in his sixteen years as Vicar, said Fr Mark. Throughout the reading of St Mark's Passion, the ominous rumble of distant thunder could be heard. A sobering start to Semana Santa Cardiff.

Thinking of which, a brief search provided me with a link to the live broadcast stream of tonight's processions in Malaga courtesy of Onda Azul Malaga. Clare thinks I'm obsessional, but for the sight of all those people participating in such a massive and well organised social religious ritual is really inspirational. I can't be there now as I was last year, popping into the city on a crowded train at the end of a day's work, but I can do now what I discovered that I could do then, and watch on-screen whenever a visit was impracticable. Ah the marvels of modern technology!

Here's the link to the stream