After last night's unjolly meeting, a not very good night's sleep, and a bit of space to reflect, I am feeling cheated!

Cheated because one of our decisions was not to have any services of our own over Easter but instead to join in with other people.  Not that I mind joining with other people, I just enjoy preparing worship for Easter and this year won't get to at all.

On Maundy Thursday we will join with D+1 and D+2 at D+1 - I don't mind this at all but a have great longing to do a 'Christian Passover Seder' which never gets any nearer to happening.  To be honest watery soup and trite poems, with no mention of an upper room or foot washing is, to me, a travesty, but there I go.

On Good Friday we will join in our traditional ecumencial thingy, which is great, except it leaps to Sunday before we end the service, and denies us the real entry into Good Friday feelings.  Let's all be jolly and munch half a hot cross bun while Jesus (symbolically) is still in agony at Calvary.  Maybe I'll need to sneak into an Anglican or Catholic vigil service.

On Easter Sunday we will join with the Methodists for their early communion and breakfast and then, in the words of one of my deacons, for goodness sake, 'have a day off.'  It means I can get to the GB Easter parade service, but I am deeply saddened that my folk don't want to celebrate the resurrection together, and with the colour and exuberance I'd long for.  This greatest festival, at the heart of our faith, the event that drew us out of Judaism and we want the day off?!  For this our forebears died?  I despair!

So I'm feeling cheated, and saddened, that this central Christian festival is being sidelined just because it is more convenient so to do.

Sorry Jesus, I did try...