Holy Week Festival 2014 Preview

In a two weeks the brochures for our Holy Week Festival 2014 will be available online and for delivery. But as I am already getting a lot of questions like ‘Dinosaurs?’ ‘Phantom of the Opera??’ here are a few answers:

During the week before Palm Sunday the Abbey will be dominated by the large Labyrinth where we will each get the chance to make a devotional journey to the cross as we wind our way around concentric circles. This is designed for both adults and children. On the evening of Wednesday 9th April we will have a candlelit late-night Labyrinth concluding with Night Prayer with Plainsong at 10pm.

I met for a couple of hours this week with the A-level art students from Malmesbury School as they make their final preparations to their Stations of the Cross pieces. This really impressive body of work, depicting Christ’s journey from Gethsemane to Calvary, opens Tuesday 8th April, and on Saturday 12th at 10am I get to interview the artists informally over coffee and hot chocolate. Come along.

The truly amazing Josh Flowers & the Wild return on the Saturday evening for a blistering evening of blues/rock/organic folk  supported by the scrumpy & western Wurzel-rapping of Tristan Cork.  Wow! Don’t miss this, and bring friends along who might be allergic to church.

After our Palm Sunday worship Monday gets a little unusual as in a darkened Abbey we project the 1925 B&W Phantom of the Opera with live organ improvisation from Anthony Hammond; and yes, that’s his real surname.

Tuesday night will be an explosion of worship with Glory! at 7.30pm and then on the Wednesday Night the dinosaur man, Mike Taylor, is back to talk about his latest discoveries in God & Dinosaurs 2. He will mess with a few heads as he holds the Bible, evolution, and dinosaurs all nicely together in one Christian palaeontologist’s brain.

Riding Lights are bringing a major Passion Play, Inheritance, to the Abbey on Maundy Thursday. This will be an evening of engrossing drama intermingled with short times of prayer and worship, and will devotionally prepare us for our services on Good Friday, including Fauré’s Requiem with the Abbey Choir at 6pm. 

BBC Wiltshire are recording a special Easter Celebration on Easter Eve at 7pm, this is ticketed and is raising money for the May Moore Trust. And then on Easter Day Bishop Lee is preaching at 10.30am, and we have 4 other services. 

I suggest we all find a corner of a sofa in the café and simply move in for the duration. I will.