KINDLY offering advice, a friend once expressed to me his view that the role of a priest or any minister in Holy Orders is to ensure the sacraments are celebrated with due solemnity, that sound doctrine is maintained and the scriptures expounded and interpreted correctly. It's a bit like Noël Coward explaining how to act on stage: simply say your lines and don't bump into the furniture.
In short, my friend's advice amounts to: get it right. There are lines to say and don't fall down the pulpit steps. However, at this time of year, my friend's words always come back to me because the Easter narrative, as told in the Gospels, is actually a patchwork of mistakes, a story about getting it wrong over and over again. Mary Magdalene makes the first error of Easter. Outside an empty tomb, she mistakes the risen Lord Jesus for a gardener. And the disciples mess up by not believing her when she tells them what she's witnessed. Fleeing Jerusalem, two of his friends fail to recognise Jesus in the stranger who joins them on the road to Emmaus; Thomas succumbs to doubting. And who is that man standing on the shore, waiting for us? Part of the point of Easter, it seems to me, is this: getting it right will get you only so far. Mistakes are vitally important.
Reading the Easter narrative again, I'm struck by how we are able through a process a bit like triangulation-to glimpse the 'back parts' of truth (Exodus 33.23) through the muddles and missteps, almost as if the power and veracity of the story is determined by the blunders and errors of its protagonists. Too often, it seems to me, we forget the value in getting it wrong.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 05, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 05, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning