Collar doves and the cross

I hope you had a good Easter. I must say that I have. It was lovely having all but one of our family with us (though we did miss him). Our grandchildren had great fun hunting for Easter eggs in the garden on Sunday morning. In Stanford we used to have them hidden round the graveyard and the children would hunt for them while the adults had a reading and sermon. It used to remind me of the angels on the first Easter morning, saying, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen."

Today we had Café Church, which is another family-sort of occasion. We'd moved on from the Easter theme. But not entirely. When we came out, we were met with a striking symbol. Sadly we didn't have a camera or iPhone to capture it, and when Jane cycled back with the camera they were gone. So I'll have to try and describe it.

On Good Friday in Grove we have an open-air service with all the churches together, at which there's a tall, rather flimsy cross. It's just a reminder of the cruel Roman means of execution to which Jesus was subjected. Afterwards it's put up in front of the parish church, by the roadside. It's still there - an empty cross. Today as we walked out of church (or at least Jane did and I chugged in my wheelchair), we noticed two dusky collar doves settled right down on the arms of the cross, one on each side, in the sun. It reminded me that the Easter story, and its meaning, doesn't end with the empty cross and the empty tomb. It doesn't even end with the risen Jesus appearing to the first disciples. It goes on to his ascension to be with God the Father - and to Pentecost, or Whitsun, when the Holy Spirit, the "promise of the Father", was given to the Church in order to enable it to live as the Kingdom of God and to share the good news of Jesus' love for everyone of all colours, languages, orientations and social status. One symbol of the Holy Spirit, of course, a dove. And so, there together were the signs of Jesus' sacrificial love for the world and his gift of his presence, strengthening, guiding and encouraging. The whole story of Easter.


I've learned that the Spirit likes to be welcomed in us, - he doesn't force himself on us -, and that it's possible to "grieve" him. I once read that a difference between pigeons and doves was that doves alight but are easily scared into flight, whereas pigeons are more phlegmatic. So it's not surprising the collar-doves had flown when Jane returned to photograph them. The writer noted that when Jesus was baptised the Spirit like a dove came and "settled" on him; in other words the Spirit was at home with him. You'll gather that I love George Herbert's poems, one of which is Whitsunday, which is a great prayer, starting:

"Listen sweet Dove unto my song 

And spread thy golden wings in me; 

Hatching my tender heart so long, 

Till it get wing, and flie away with thee."  We need to invite him to come and then continually cherish his presence in us.