Right now, Easter is difficult to recognise. Alleluia! Alleluia!” And the reply flies back to us, “He is risen indeed. The Light is here! And joy flows over.Īs we emerge from the church, we cry, “Christ has risen. Imogen’s voice rises higher and higher, filling the dark with the psalms. We sit, silent and still, eyes alight with excitement, listening to the familiar Biblical stories. A normal Easter.Īs the sun sets on Holy Saturday, we follow the Paschal candle into the church. “Dad thought that meant he could be silly!” Do you remember how we did a serious one, and then I said we should sing it again with more joy?” “That was the second version we recorded that year.

One of our videos has unexpectedly reappeared.Īndy hits ‘play’ on the video on his phone, and the past enters the present. And, sadly, that was the end of that tradition.

No one gathered together to sing our favourite hymn. One Easter, after we’d returned home from Mass, I didn’t get out my camera. They’re probably the last ones we ever made. We have years and years of videos that tell our Easter story: who was at home that year and how old everyone was. I saw us!”Īndy turns his phone towards us and, yes, there’s our family on a Catholic hymn book website singing the very hymn we’ve just sung: By Your Kingly Power, O Risen Lord.įor a long time, each Easter Sunday morning, Andy and our kids would sing By Your Kingly Power while I recorded the hymn as a video. “When I scrolled to the last words on this website, I saw someone I recognise. We sing the final words, our faces stretched wide with smiles.Īndy is more than smiling. Looking over his shoulder, I can see that he’s found the words to our favourite hymn online. Suddenly, Andy thrusts the hymn book into my hand and starts fiddling with his phone. I perch myself on the arm of Andy’s chair where I can see the words in the hymn book that he’s holding, and then we follow Imogen’s lead and start singing: And we keep singing for the next six weeks.īut this year, our voices have been silent. We sing through Holy Week and on to Easter. In a normal season, Easter is full of singing.

“And how about we sing By Your Kingly Power, O Risen Lord? It’s the second Sunday of Easter, and we haven’t sung that hymn even once.” “Can we sing Through the Red Sea Brought at Last?” I ask as Imogen passes around the hymn books. She finds the old red Living Parish books, held together by sticky tape, that somehow found their way to us many years ago. Imogen hunts through the top drawer of the tall chest that stands in the hall by our front door, looking for our hymn books.

Radical Unschool Love by Sue Elvis