I think it must be very difficult for a priest going to a strange church with an unknown congregation to take a service using that church's srvice books possibly without even knowing in advance which of the many variants of wording and form they use there. (In our group of parishes 2 use BCP, 2 Common Worship modern language and 2 CW with (mainly) traditional language, and one seems to be living in the 17th century with BCP Morning Prayer and no Communion - enough to confuse a senior cleric with a lifetime's experience, let alone a non-stipendiary whose experience may well not extend much beyond his/her home parish.)

Cuxwold uses BCP, which I generally rather like. However I have a feeling that the visiting priest was not wholly familiar with this form and I have to say that I was not particularly impressed with the Easter Service. Surely, even if you are being especially careful with an unfamiliar order of service, there is no need to stick so rigidly to 1662 that there was no greeting as in Common Worship or ASB - not so much as a "The Lord be with you" "And with thy spirit", let alone the joyous Easter greeting of "The Lord is risen" "He is risen indeed". In fact she rushed so headlong into the Lord's Prayer that we were all caught still standing from the first hymn. Anyway it continued rather sad and muted, and the rigid adherence to BCP which had marked the beginning of the service including the full recital of the 10 commandments, was abandoned for the readings so that we got a rather non-descript bit of Acts instead of Colosseans 3:1 "If ye then be risen with Christ . . ." and St. Luke's account of the resurrection rather that St. John's.

Her sermon gave us a lot of images - a palm cross, a sprig of rosemary, an empty egg-shell, a picture of the risen Christ, and a rather sad piece of music sung by a Ukrainian choir. On Easter Day I want joy (the Easter Hymn from 'Cavalliera Rusticana' or the Hallelujah Chorus) and I felt that we were left with the sadness of Good Friday still unresolved. At least the church was full which, among other things, meant that our singing was better than usual. And the weather was wonderful.

Here is a picture of Josh (at 16 really a bit on the old side for this), Jess and Rowan hunting Easter eggs.
Easter Egg Hunt 2007
In Belgium the tradition is not that the eggs are hidden by the Easter Bunny, but are shaken down by the church bells - and this is the tradition we have always followed. Although the Easter Bunny has never played any part in the Turner family Easter, this year there were more chocolate rabbits in evidence than eggs - Lidl did an absolutely magnificent one in both plain and milk chocolate, and it is rare to find the dark chocolate which everyone but Josh (and Rowan) prefers.
Easter BunnyDaffodil Cross
Finally a picture for the Rev Ruth of a daffodil cross I spotted on my way home today from buying stuff to sort out the leak in the bathroom.