How do you spend Good Friday?

I’d asked Good Friday off without specific plans, except that I would be helping my better half chauffeur some of her ESL class around. I had a vague idea of trying to spend some time in prayer, and maybe try a fast.

First on the agenda was getting a dresser (on the West side) for Middle Daughter, prefaced by a breakfast of sausages. The dresser turned out to be an exceptionally heavy oak piece which barely fit in the van and demanded an unconventional seating arrangement. But it arrived without hernias, and in time for Middle Daughter to join in taking some kids to Shedd Aquarium (which detoured to Field because of utter disorganization in Shedd’s call handling; beware).

We were early but the two Chinese children and their mothers were already waiting for us. We brought them to see a horse barn, and the city-bred children got to watch a multitude of chicken breeds clucking up in hopes of food while geese honked disapproval of such visitors at the wrong time. The kids brushed and fed treats to a docile miniature horse, and watched amazed at such tiny girls leading such large horses around the ring while a cat tried to teach freeze-tag to a mouse.

Noisy dogs they knew already, but had never seen a rabbit up close, nor newly shorn sheep, nor goats begging treats while resting their feet on round fence rails, nor donkeys quarreling about something obscure. The Lost and Found box, sitting in the sunshine, always seems to harbor a sleeping cat.

Milk bottling at a dairy was new, but they knew their ice cream flavors and put away strawberry and blue moon with gusto.

The obvious thing to do with your wife after such a field trip is to stop at Husnus for lunch.

Not much in the way of fasting. Follow the day, not the calendar.

But we did follow the calendar too. The custom of our church’s Good Friday evening service is to leave in silence. Silence is an underrated part of worship.