Easter at the Secret Garden

Easter in Orthodox Christian countries such as Romania was a week after the western Easter this year. It varies from year to year - it can be as much as five weeks later and only occasionally coincides. The Romanian word for Easter is Pasti (pronounced Pasht) and is more strongly linked to the Jewish Passover than in the West, the same word being used for both. It is a beautiful time with some lovely and interesting traditions. Our favourite part of Easter is the "Inviere" (Resurrection) service on the Saturday night. At around 23.30 everyone gathers at the Orthodox church and waits with candles in their hands for the priest to come out of the church. When the priest appears everyone lights their candles from him and then from each other and proceeds around the church following the priest and his entourage. After three times around the church the priest then goes to the door of the church and sings the words of the Gospel about Mary and the other Mary going to the tomb of Jesus and finding it empty. This is interspersed with the congregation singing a short refrain which goes something like this "Christ has risen from the dead, with (his) death trampling on death, and to those in the graves he has given life" and at the end of the "Inviere" a pure white spotless lamb is brought into the church (thankfully not to be sacrificied!)

Another of the traditions which we love and always keep is the painting and decorating of eggs. Eggs are hard boiled and then dyed a variety of colours, the most important being red or painted with beautiful designs.

At the Secret Garden we spent the whole of Good Friday (or Great Friday as it's called in Romanian) painting eggs, followed by watching the "Jesus" film.

As children arrived with their mums we presented them all with hard boiled eggs and felt tip pens and wax crayons and explained to them that we were having an egg painting competition.

The expression of the faces of some of the mums was comical ...

"not us, we can't do that!" they said ... "Oh yes you can!" we

replied, "but women like us don't do things like that" they argued ..."Why not?" we asked, and as they thought about it, they realised that there was actually no reason why not so they picked up eggs and pens and got stuck in! As you can see from the photos, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves!

It was a somewhat chaotic day in some ways as not only did we have a whole room full of people all busily painting eggs but we

had others coming and going.

Some came hoping for Easter food parcels, but we'd only been able to put together 30 this year as we had no money. We would have liked to be able to give to all the families who come to the day centre, even those who only call in occasionally but we just couldn't.

... and finally, as each child left they recieved a goodie bag and the mums a bag of groceries - not a lot, but a small help for them at this time of celebration.