Easter Week

Our (not quite) Monastic Holy Week

We attempted set prayer time 3 times a day.  Mom put together power points for us so we could make the correct responses and listen to some of the services in the chanting of the old style church services.  We got to experience a bit of music from various traditions such as Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and even Greek Orthodox.  Parts of it we liked, parts we didn't. Some of the music was beautiful, but some sounded so discordant or too difficult to sing along with - especially when it was in Latin or Greek! Saying set prayers was kinda ok, but we like saying our own prayers better.  We liked the strong Scripture focus - we read so much of it in each service.

Mom found a Medieval cookbook and so we ate a plain menu all week (mostly, anyhow). Mom liked it because the meals were so simple to prepare. We liked it because we got to eat lots of bread - and some meals were really yummy - but we all are glad to be back to our regular food. Dad didn't enjoy "fasting" from his hot sauce. And Aiden missed his morning mango.

Thursday night we hosted a family of Aiden's friends for a Passover meal. It was fun to have guests again, and to be the first to introduce them to a Christian Passover celebration.

Friday we planned to go to a Stations of the Cross service at a local Catholic cathedral. After some difficulties in getting there (having to bike there when we couldn't get a Grab car, dad's GPS malfunctioning, arriving in time to only be ushered into the overflow room, it raining heavily during the service, etc.), the experience was a good one. Although Aiden got pretty bored - he forgot to take his glasses so he couldn't read the screen, and half the stations were conducted in Tamil - it was interesting to participate in a different tradition still very Christ centered. Then Friday evening we attended a service at our own church that was joint with our Mandarin congregation so we had plenty of language fun on Friday - as well as more good preaching.

Saturday evening we held our own Easter Vigil/Tenebrae service. It was good, but we all agreed that experiencing it as a congregation in church would be much more evocative and that we'd prefer the one that reads through the Gospels rather than the one we did that uses the Psalms.

Sunday morning we joined a wonderful celebration at our church. Grace and Aiden participated in the flagging team. This video only glimpses Grace and has some of Aiden, but you can get the idea of our celebration time. 

 The service was molded around the story of Jesus meeting the two disciples walking to Emmaus. They had three men act out the story as it was narrated, freezing in place for various parts of the service. Interesting and very well done. Afterwards we managed to get a photo taken of us in our new batik Easter clothes.

Then we ate dim sum in celebration and went home to flop for the afternoon. Dad wrapped up the week with a short our-style prayer time in which Grace got the final touches to yet another song of hers.  She and Jasmin managed to finish and release the one they've been working on for a long while for Easter:

 

It was a new idea for us to make Holy Week more intensively Easter focused instead of observing all of Lent. We think it went well, despite the fact that we couldn't all stop school/work and focus on it as much as we had hoped. We'll do it again - probably without the bread-based diet and perhaps sticking to one church tradition instead of sampling all kinds.

 

Palm Sunday

 A new family tradition perhaps? Courtesy of Dad... palm sundaes.

That was our beginning to a different Holy Week. Rather out of character since we are attempting to experience Holy Week through a monastic lens, but a hit none the less - despite the somewhat solemn / unsure faces in the photo!

Birds, Batik, and Boy

 At the corner at the bottom of our road, there are a few trees that all the birds in the neighbourhood seem to have chosen as their roosting spot. Going by at dawn or dusk, we are treated to a true twitterfest... here's a sample:

We took a break this last week on Thursday and went to do some batik at the factory. It is highly therapeutic :) Even Aiden was quite into it, painting 2 squares. We did this 4ish years ago with great results, and we look forward to seeing what the improved results will be this time. We get to pick up the finished product later this week.

You get to do it right in the main factory area so in-between doing our own squares, we could watch the experts painting bolts of cloth, both with block printing and painstaking hand painted designs.

It requires a very steady hand and a good eye to get the dye where you want it and no where else. And a good guess as to what shade the dye will dry to!

We had a great time there being treated to VIP attentive service as we were the only ones there for most of the afternoon. We even bought some batik clothing at the store front - and enjoyed the shopping experience for once! It felt like a very special afternoon all around, as on the way there we were the only ones on the bus so the driver dropped us off right at the factory instead of the closest bus stop!

Another little love gift from God over the last week: On Aiden's mommy date at Secret Recipe, he got extra personalized decoration on his pie plate!