Eastertide: New Life, New Stress

After all my musings on the topic of creation, I was struck afresh by Genesis 1 at the Easter vigil service this year. I heard the tale more clearly than before as a simple expression of faith by the ancient authors. No one this side of insanity could take literally the description of the vault of heaven dividing the waters above from the waters below; but the account stands pure and simple as a statement of spiritual affirmation. Believing that the world had such a form, the authors stated their conviction that God was the source of it; but what they happened to believe about the physical constitution of the world is immaterial to the underlying affirmation.

Despite the incomprehension of our well-meaning but blinkered musicians when anything exotic such as a Taize chant or a responsorial psalm is called for, the service was grounded in reality and quite uplifting, from the bonfire in the churchyard to the generous spraying of the congregation with water from the font. It was also a welcome brief respite from the turmoil of home life, where the active and increasingly self-willed Squirmle 1 is now manifesting his unsettled feelings at the recent arrival of Squirmle 2, and the latter is giving his mother much discomfort and frustration and virtually no sleep. (I can hear him squawking now, at a minute to midnight, and he may not take much of a break before 5 a.m.)