Easter, it is.

Who can believe that it is already Holy Week?  For me, the unreal feeling is not just to do with the pace of time but also about the fact of living in a non-Christian country where hardly anyone in your city even knows what Easter is.  Good Friday is a particularly strange day as it has a particular religious significance you recognise while it is just another working day for all around you.  It gives you a funny sense. 

Ther are no Easter eggs to be found anywhere while the shops are full of water pistols in readiness for the real Thai holiday, Songkran Festival, which follows on after Easter. 

Still I do have a four day weekend like back home as Caritas being Catholic closes on Good Friday and Monday is a public holiday in honour of the Thai royal dynasty which just happens to fall this year on Easter Monday.  So it is a holiday time but in a roundabout way for a Christian in Bangkok where Christianity is definitely a minority religion. 

Praying to the spirit house at his work on our Holy Thursday 

The strangeness gives you another experience of the Easter weekend, as you sense the weakness, the vulnerability of being a Christian which is a central theme of Good Friday. 

Being in a big, Buddhist city where so few recognise Easter and go to a Christian church anyway, there is a lack of a 'morale booster' factor for going to church.  You just easily think that you are on your own and so why bother.  That is not true of course but this is a really felt experience when you are a Christian in an isolated setting.  After over nine years here and now becoming so firmly a part of a faith community at the cathedral, that part of being here has faded.  I notice this year that the 'morale booster' factor has returned.  I will go to church for the ceremonies and once again like before at home I so want to go because I belong to a community and am part of people's lives in that community.  So I just want to be there with them and join in the special time. 

Faith really is a shared experience and never a 'go it alone' thing to be simply done in isolation.