My Dear Friends and Parishioners,

The best months of the year are upon us, lovely April and May. The unstoppable, beautiful change of earth, sky, wind and light. And it involves Easter. Easter is birthed in Spring, Easter is our Life’s Spring. Two thousand years ago our Lord gave up His life, that we might link our lives to His: forgiven, accepted, loved. And with the paradise of an eternal life. This sort of faith is shocking, but it is true and open to all. This living Faith is the lifeblood of the totally awake man or woman.

The faith has captivated people in every century. Truth has a ring! And people respond differently. I offer you lines of Henry Vaughan. And may I wish you a most thoughtful, most understanding and most lovely Easter.

Henry Vaughan (1622 – 1695) was nicknamed ‘the Silurist’ because of his love for his native county of Brecknockshire in Wales (once inhabited by the Silures). He studied law at Oxford and in London, then changed from law to medicine and returned to Wales as a doctor. Vaughan may have served as a surgeon in the English Civil War. He was certainly an ardent supporter of the king, and fought on the king’s side. He and his twin brother Thomas were imprisoned for their Royalist sympathies. Vaughan’s spiritual life was suddenly deepened after a serious illness, and from then on he wrote only religious poetry and tried to suppress his earlier, more light-hearted works.

Easter Hymn

Death and darkness get you packing, Nothing now to man is lacking,
All your triumphs now are ended, And what Adam marred is mended; Graves are beds now for the weary, Death a nap, to wake more merry; Youth now, full of pious duty,

Seeks in thee for perfect beauty,
The weak, and aged tired, with length Of days, from thee look for new strength, And infants with thy pangs contest
As pleasant, as if with the breast;
Then, unto him, who thus hath thrown Even to contempt thy kingdom down, And by his blood did us advance
Unto his own inheritance,
To him be glory, power, praise,
From this, unto the last of days.

Yours very truly, Ian Whittle
The Rectory, Langham 01328 830246