GOOD FRIDAY. Is it really 'good'?

"It's as if the weather knew, knew that it is Good Friday. When they nailed him back then on Calvary it rained, when we planted the Easter cross today it rained. It's really as if the weather knew and did the crying for us."

After nearly 5 weeks of Lent, I cannot believe how fast Easter has crept up on me yet again. Each Lent, rather similar to every New Year, I am filled with inspiration and desire to meet my Lenten sacrifices as I similarly try to meet New Year resolutions. How true that Jesus mentions: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Perhaps that is the curse on mankind, the cross we have to bear.

A crowd watching the planting of the Easter cross on Good Friday | Abbey Hill, Kenilworth

Perhaps not all of us are like me, inspired and desiring to do things, but ultimately not achieve all of it because the flesh is weak. I pray the better lot of us out there are better at keeping Lenten promises and New Year resolutions. But perhaps it is a common human condition to always want to do something but never do; Harold Pinter captures this pitiful reality in his plays, in particular in "The Caretaker". The only 2 characters in the play sit in a room and talk about all their plans, mundane plans, and errands they want to do, but ultimately not leave the room right till the end of the play. Sounds vaguely familiar? For me, I can only hear the echoes of guilt and exasperation in my room.

Yaoen and Oliver at the planting of the Easter cross | Abbey Hill, Kenilworth

Good Friday often strikes a somber, guilty discordant chord in me. But somehow, this discordance has its own beauty; the realisation that I am only human awash with shortcomings and yet this pinnacle of imperfection still has a place in the presence of perfection. Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter celebrates the welcoming of Jesus into the community of Jews some 2,000 years ago; riding on a humble donkey, Jesus was welcomed at the city gates with people waving palm leaves. After my trip to Morocco, one better understands the reverance the Arabs and the people in Arabia give to the palm tree. So this was a welcome fit for a king.

Yet, it is the very same people who welcomed Him that condemned Him to His death just a week later on Good Friday. Perhaps you better understand the guilt now; like the Jews centuries ago who codemn Jesus to His death, I do the same today each time I sin. But it takes a fall for the rising to be beautiful isn't it? And so it is the same for this Easter triduum; the fall on Good Friday, the rising of hope on Easter Sunday.

The Easter cross planted on Good Friday | Abbey Hill, Kenilworth

Easter never fails to be a poignant event of every year. Each year, it fills me with new hope and inspiration once more to live life and live it well. Knowing only a fraction of this inspiration will be turned into deed, I look forward once more to Easter next year. After all, I am but a human that needs constant hope to embrace the reality that "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak".

Happy Easter everyone, with or without the bunnies and eggs. Even if Easter was not a religious occasion for you, its a compelling story to reflect upon, won't you think so?

"Hope of Easter" | Tulip about to bloom | Outside Social Science Building, University of Warwick

Uncle T