April 2020 Magazine

Easter Pastoral letter
March 2020
Dear Friends,
Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet, was a diligent keeper of
her journal. An entry of 15 April 1802 records a walk with her
brother from their Lake District home, Dove Cottage. She mentions
that the morning had been ‘threatening, misty but mild’ but then
records that after dinner she and William set off accompanied by a
friend who, after a short way, turned back. Dorothy records that
‘the wind was furious’ and indicates that she and William also
thought of turning back. But they kept going even though, as she
put it ‘the wind seized our breath’ and ‘the lake was rough’. There
are delightful details about stepping into a field to avoid some cows,
references to primroses, wood sorrel, hawthorns, anemones,
violets. Then she records: ‘When we were in the woods beyond
Garrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside. We
fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little
colony had sprung up.’ She continues: ‘But as we went along there
were more and yet more and at last, under the boughs of the trees
we saw there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the
breadth of a country turnpike road……I never saw daffodils so
beautiful….they tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if
they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the
lake’.
Reading this I found myself thinking. What if the Wordsworths had
turned back on account of the weather? Would we have been
deprived of one the best loved poems in the English language? I
also found myself thinking that William had a bit of help from his
sister!
More seriously, I suggest there is an Easter parable here. What if
the disciples had turned back after the storms of Holy Week and
gradually resumed their former lives? What if Good Friday was the
end of the story? There is evidence of the historical Jesus in sources
other than the New Testament. That an itinerant Jewish teacher
and preacher of that name lived in Galilee and was crucified is not
disputed. It’s the bit that comes after which is harder to explain,
less easy to believe in the 21st century. And yet, clearly something
hugely significant happened to turn people like Peter from cowardly
denial in Gethsemane to the courageous and forthright preacher
we meet in the Book of Acts. The risen Lord, he tells us was