I'm not sure I've collected my thoughts enough for this entry...they're rather scattered. But I was definitely thinking about my mom: how on Good Friday she would shut off the television between noon and three—per the Bible verse: "At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon"—and say her Rosary or read her prayers—she read daily from the Sacred Heart pamphlet, and the Infant of Prague. We were always taught that we should be as still as possible between those hours on Good Friday.

This year I thought it might be helpful to be a bit meditative myself, which is why I had the daily Mass readings app on my Droid during Lent (until, of course, it abruptly vanished and I had to go search out the site the feed was coming from; that worked as well). And I decided to take this afternoon off.

When I woke up, it was cloudy and quite dark. I tick-tapped the keyboard as I worked this morning, through the gloom, and then turned away from the computer at noon and put some low music on—I have no Easter music, so put on "Renaissance Holiday" and then the 2-disc set of carols from King's College, and sat to read: today's daily Mass readings, the the Lenten and Good Friday chapters from Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season, and finally Robert Fulghum's What on Earth Have I Done? in which he talks about "the Mother Questions": "What on earth have you done?" "What in the name of God are you doing?" "What will you think of next?" "Who do you think you are?" When Mom asks them, daunting enough...but in reality, questions to ask yourself for all time.

At one point, the King's College Choir was singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" so sweetly that I had to raise my head from the book to appreciate how beautiful it was.

How odd then that right after three, after all those hours of darkness, the sun came out again.

I had to bookmark this bit by Fulghum, I liked it so:
     Meanwhile, the trucks of fate roll by.
     The trick is not to get run over by one.
     The trick is to be there, alert, by the side of the road, with your thumb out. So that if the truck with your number on it just happens to come along, you will know. And you will get in and go. And the ride will be as long and as lovely as you always imagined it might be.

Labels: books, music, thoughts

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 3:24:00 PM

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