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EASTER MORNING SUN. WHITE PLAINS NY USA AND HARDY DAFFODILS IN FULL BLOOM
WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey. April 9, 2023:
When I was in high school in Pleasantville, New York, the Band Director, Mr. Lockwood used to volunteer members of the Pleasantville High School Military Band for an ensemble of a half-dozen members of the band, trombones, trumpets, clarinets, flutes, snare drumsto play at the traditional sunrise service held on “Flag Hill” on Easter Sunday.
We would park at the top of Flag Hill on the West side of the town and trudge in to the slight crest of the hill the pre-sunrise chill. Some sunrises were very chilly like this morning.
We would play if memory serves me right, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “Were you there when they crucified my Lord” and the robust “jesus Christ is Risen Today,Halleluja” the traditional conclusion.
Being outside on the highest point in Pleasantville watching the sunrise, playing and hearing the hardy band of churchgoers and the minister’s message seemed the right way to start the Easter Sunday dinner prior to the Easter gathering on Grandmother’s house for the entire family.
For 10 years now I have attended the First Baptist Church Sunrise Service in White Plains on the grounds of the church. It provided the same feeling of wonder.
The First Baptist Church did not hold the service this year because it is in a transitional period of leadership. I was told the church hoped to start up their sunrise service again next year.
For those of you who remember those Sunrise Services of the past here WPCNR publishes this report of the First Baptist Church Sunrise Service of April 2015: followed by a poem of my own memory of the distant Flag Hill Sunrise Services of memoryl
I attended services in God’s Cathedral this morning in White Plains New York, USA.
I walked out before dawn had broken on the eastern horizon. The full moon was still in the western sky as sunrise approached.
Walking north towards the Easter Sunday Service that was to begin 6:10 Easter morning, the first harbingers of dawn were soft chirping of birds high in the trees.
Approaching the First Baptist Church the very light green-blue flash of dawn broke across the eastern curvature of the Earth. It happens every morning, a sight that always holds the hope of endless promise for a new day every day. For every person, of every faith.
Emboldened, the arms of dawn first light extend themselves, embracing earth, encircling arms of orange-red-yellow-every color chasing darkness caressing beloved Earth with glow of promise, discovery, renewal – a light soft yet growing more intense and diffuse the very light green turns to light blue with warming orange glow beneath. All dawns are new and different each day, but none more revered than the dawn of an Easter Sunday.
The arms of dawn comfort the beleaguered the bereft, the believer, the skeptic alike. Announcing the Sun is coming.
Twenty persons were gathered for the Easter Sunday Service on the old J.C. Penny estate in White Plains, now the grounds of the First Baptist Church of White Plains & Iglesia Mision Bautista.There was linger of winter in this very late Spring on the grounds and it was 33 degrees.
Pastor Tim Dalton began with this statement: “Faith is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.
The evocative hymn was sung with reverent wistfulness and I felt a feeling of wonder and warmth against the crisp morning… the sky to the West above already turning blue with the dawn and the full moon on the wane.
We were there Easter morning, Allelu!
We were there Easter morning, Allelu!
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble
We were there Easter morning, Allelu!
After a solemn opening prayer delivered by the Pastor (spoken as if he was one of the flock), saying what each of us came and probably felt on this morning; what the sunrise today represented; what the resurrection of Jesus of Nazereth signified, as the dawn rose glowing in the East. The confluence of the dawn presented an infusion of essence into the souls arriving to mark this special dawn.
A litany followed, the significance of the belief in the resurrection was articulated by response in the last three lines:
PEOPLE: TAKE HOLD OF YOUR COURAGE; RELEASE YOUR FEARS,
Pastor: Unleash the buried song within your souls; look death straight in the eye; walk on with confidence.
PEOPLE: For Christ the Lord is risen! Christ is risen for you!
A guitarist and three singers sang a beautiful hymn in Spanish. Hearing the eloquence of these versus in the haunting melody of guitar and the romance language conveyed the sweetness of the day:
Jesucristo,
Ya vencio la muerte;
Con poder glorioso
Ha resucitado.
Donde, oh muerte,
Donde esta tu triunfo?
Donde, oh sepulcro,
Donde tu Victoria?
El promote
Que tambien nosotros
Resucitaremos, Gloria, aleluya
Pastor Dalton read John 20:1-18 which had the eyewitness impact of the event that is recalled every year – and in the beginning for to recall the event was to invite imprisonment and death. Here are some of the words of the report of the Apostle John.
As Pastor Tim read the scripture from about 20 minutes to 7, the disk of the rising sun began to rise slowly in a blazing halo of brilliant yellow on the dark hills to the east:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in (the tomb) and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in (the tomb). Then Simon Peter came, following him (the first disciple), and went into the tomb.
He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
But Mary (Magdalene) stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.
They said to her, “Woman why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Mary Magalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” and she told them that he had said these things to her.
The passages were read Spanish, and as the sun rose brighter than an object you see just above the horizon, the singers and guitarist performed Gloria, Gloria Aleluya that featured this verse of hope:
Con ejercitos no gana sus
Victorias el Senior;
Ni con armas lucha contra
Satanas, el Tentador,
Lo potencia del Espiritu,
Ha dicho el Dios de amor,
Es lo que vencera.
The Sun disc fully risen, the Pastor asked the souls present to look and listen to the sounds and enjoy the sights of God’s creations around them. Chirping of birds was heard. Two seagulls flew west overhead with the dawn. Even a rabbit was seen to observe from some distance away. (Can you spot the rabbit below?)
The Group joined for a final hymn, Lord of the Dance, a song written by the Shaker community in the 19th century, a graphic, but joyous song and autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth , a fitting coda on the significance of this morning. I quote the last three verses:
I danced on the Sabbath when I cured the lame,
The holy people said it was a shame;
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high;
And they left me there on a cross to die.
I danced on a Friday and the sky turned black;
it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back;
they buried my body and they thought I’d gone,
but I am the dance and I still go on.
They cut me down and I leapt up high,
I am the life that’ll never never die;
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.
Pastor Dalton closed the sunrise ceremony encouraging all advising that the message of this day is to live lives of mercy, of caring, of tolerance, and working towards the good
Sunrise Service
In the crisp bite of early dawn
Roused by the ever loyal mom
To a warm breakfast then driven to a school rendezvous on the way
To play Jesus Christ is Risen Today .
Up and through the dark back road to old Flag Hill above the Saw Mill
We were driven, six chosen musicians to play fanfare
Celebrating the resurrection of long ago as first rays of dawn broke the chill.
After we played our brassy peal of annunciation
The pastor announced simply, “He has risen” and said an invocation,
On the downbeat from our instructor,
We played the joyous hymn and song burst forth
From the tiny band, voices vibrant beyond talent
Took up the simple refrain, “Je US CHRIST has riSEN toDAAY”
With each verse our brass tones played fuller, bolder triumphant
Expanding our chests with pride, courage and steadfast melody.
From crisp wind no longer did we cower.
Sun blaze rose in the east across our town,
Upon the last jubilant coda, the echoes did sound
Descending across the valley below and above to the high tension tower
In somber words the pastor’s message told the story
Of empty tomb, of the incredible happening
And for the rest of the day we who had played
Announcing the news in song and peal of brass
Had recreated that time of myth that has endured in faith
The thought of which renews us still that our time here will not from memory pass.
In the holiday dinner that would follow,
Cousins, aunts and uncles would gather
With the matriarch of the family.
Today we are scattered,
Do not gather together as we did then in harmony
Still I feel the warmth of Easters past
When those who have departed we think of once more
And how they created a family that would last.