good Friday

-Seeing my housemate Jonee in his play at the Waterfront. It was called "Over the Bridge" and is about sectarian tension in Belfast shipyards in the 50's during the IRA Border Campaign. It was painful, raw, redemptive and, beginning and ending with a hymn sung, it somehow to me conveyed the God who is bigger than sectarian violence in God's name.

-Seeing a video of some of the kids from church dancing to "Nooma, Nooma" during our Easter Party last week. It's absolutely hilarious, and great to see Roma kids dancing with them.

-Texting back and forth to my Mom and feeling a bit closer to home.

-I can't believe it's already Good Friday. This Lent has really been a journey of discernment and attempts at patience, and I can't wait for Easter. I'm going to a Good Friday service at St. Anne's Cathedral (also called the "Belfast Cathedral") this afternoon to contemplate the last three hours of Jesus' life. Frederick Buechner had some good things to say about Good Friday:

I believe that by dying [Jesus] released into the world an entirely new kind of life, his kind of life, that has flowed down through the tragic centuries like water through a dry land, making alive and whole all who will only kneel to drink. That is the only reason it is not blasphemy to speak of the Friday of his unspeakable death as Good Friday.