Month: April 2026

A decade or so ago I had a brush with death. A capsized canoe left me swimming in February waters where tides swept me out into the middle of the Firth, far from safety. I swam for an hour with no wetsuit before being fished out on the end of a wire attached to a rescue helecopter. I was fortunate in so many ways, but one image that persists when I remember that day was of birds wheeling above me as I swam for the shore, wondering if they knew I was in trouble. My resurection involved treatment for severe hypothermia, after which I shook violently for days. Many of you will have similar stories of close calls, which almost ended everything. Perhaps for some of us, those near ends were also new beginnings?

But on this dark Saturday, it is much too soon to talk about new beginnings.

The story, as it comes to us, concerns itself with failure far worse than my flounder in the Firth of Clyde.

It tells of powerlessness before a whim of Empire, whose priorities dwarfed those of the ragged radical band of love-mongers.

Trouble, even good trouble, must be swatted aside lest lowly people start to get the idea that they are carriers of the divine.

Sometimes all we have left is to surrender our bodies to the unstoppable flow.

Perhaps this is the end of everything we hoped for.

Today we are so grateful to The Many for sharing this beautiful offering of lament.

If you can, take some time today. Light a candle and let the Many take you on a journey. Here, we will do just that. We will share communion – in a way that feels authentic – and then we will eat a hot cross bun in gratefulness for everything that carries us forward.

Today the King will toss out a few specially minted coins today as a symbol of charity to fellow man. Of course, he can afford it, and it might be a nice distraction from his troubles.

The origins of the word ‘Maundy’ seems to be obscure, but one thought is that it derives from the Middle English and Old French mandé, from the Latin mandatum, the first word of the phrase “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos” which many of you will of course already have correctly translated (!) into these words from John chapter 13;

 ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this shall men know you are my disciples.’

The story comes to us that Jesus gathered with his friends for a last meal together. One of them was going to betray him, another would deny him before the night was over. After all the parables and obscure teachings he offered something unequivocal. He distilled his hopes for his friends into this one simple phrase. Then he demonstrated it as well by washing their road stained feet.

There are so many other things he could have said– stuff about saving souls, striving for correct doctrine, worshiping correctly, fighting to defend the true faith, condemning sins, particularly sexual sins, etc.. In other words, all of those things that became the preoccupation of his followers over the years to come; he chose not to mention.

So, being people who strive for integrity, how do we demonstrate love for one another? What does this look like? Can we (or others) really recognise it when we see it?

I think of my own community- a loose ragged group of people on a parallel journey. Our love is sometimes tinged with irritation, pride, ignorance. There are undercurrents that even when unacknowledged leave stains on our gatherings. The quality of our loving is imperfect, certainly less than Christ-like. I fear it might not be convincing to others who might observe from the outside.

Then I remember that gathering that Jesus had with his followers – incuding the betrayer and the denier. There was probably a grumpy and a greedy too and the odd know-it-all. The measure here is not perfection, not even excellence.

Love is not a legal transaction, it is the persistence of kindness.

Here is one of my (Chris’s) big old pots. I got excited when I made it, then when I glazed and raku fired it, I hated it. It sat in a dark corner for a while then more recently I pulled it out again and decided… that I liked it after all. I wonder if some of you other artists have had the same fluctuating relationship with your work? Perhaps this comes from the usual doubts and insecurities of most creative processes – or the way that it always feels like we are reaching for something just otside of reach.

I remembed too the words we inscribed on this pot and perhaps there is a clue here too about encounter. About how it can be useful to encounter something that is ‘other’ rather than familiar, so that we can see things differently.

Set me free so I might go to new places, there to meet people who disagree, whose circumstances dictate a shape I might never else encounter.

We are grateful for this poem from Jim Kucher today, as we look forward towards the events of the weekend to come. It is suggesting that we look beyond what we are familiar with towards a wider, more generous understanding of the Easter story.

No Substitutions

j.h. kucher


No transaction was performed

that day

up on the hill.

No eye for eye,

no life for life.

The curtain was not torn

by catastrophe or ire;

but that we –

in our darkest days,

our deepest pain,

can know

that our Creator knows

EXACTLY

how we feel.