MEMORIES

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

It was in the monastery garden yesterday that I came across a host of golden daffodils and like Wordsworth “I was in vacant and pensive mood.”

The beautiful picture brought back memories of learning the poem as a child and remembering it when I wandered in the countryside of Oxfordshire.

That memory has never left me.

Others must have similar memories, perhaps of a holiday in the Lakes near Grasmere.

Others living abroad and seeing daffodils will say with Robert Browning: “Oh, to be in England now that April’s there.

Probably for all of us daffodils are a sign that spring has arrived.

This year it did seem an exceptionally long time coming!

One began to wonder whether the rain would ever stop.

Then one morning over the hills there was a strikingly beautiful sunrise which seemed to awaken the new life that was breaking out all over the countryside.

Spring reminds Christians that Easter will soon be here with its incredible, joyful, cry echoing through our churches: “Christ is risen, Alleluia.

The Lenten journey with Christ will be over.

The lighted Pascal candle a sign of new life, of hope and of joy.

But can we be joyful when there is so much sadness in our world?

Have we the right to sing “Alleluia” when children are being killed in war zones?

Should we light our Easter candle when there is so much darkness?

There is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.

We call the darkest of days “Good”!

There is in the human heart awareness that evil can be overcome.

Beneath all that happens there is meaning - God is working.

Christian faith remembers that in the early morning, before the sun rose, they came to the tomb and it was empty………and surely in the Garden the daffodils were “fluttering and dancing in the breeze”.