Candlemas

When I lived in Norwich, I once went to a perfect and beautiful Candlemas service at St Julian's Church, and this has been one of my favourite festivals of the church year ever since.
There was a 7pm service at St Mary's last night, to celebrate Candlemas, so I loaded Islay into her trolley and trundled down there.
The beginning of the service was the blessing of the candles - in earlier times, people used to bring their candles from home to be blessed for the coming year. It's also the last day of Christmastide for those churches that keep the liturgical year, so the Christmas crib was still up, to be taken down after the service. And it's the time that Christians remember when Jesus was presented in the Temple as a baby, and recognised as the Messiah by Simeon and Anna.
Islay tends to get a bit anxious and clingy in church, so I couldn't join in the candlelit procession (Father Richard said "We'll all take a little walk and remember Simeon holding the baby Jesus") or hold a candle because my lap was full of dog. She settled down on my coat on the pew later. There were three other dogs in church - Jimmy the Curate, of course, who took himself off to lie on a pew, Henry the retriever, and a sheepdog who took a keen interest in the service, even following the priests right up to the altar to see what was going on.
Christina sang the solos in the choir, and I was rather pleased with myself for working out the Latin anthem the choir sang, which was from the Nunc Dimittis: "To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel".
The priest who gave the sermon even mentioned St Benet's Abbey in the Norfolk Broads, which was an extra bit of nostalgia for me, as I've visited the abbey (it has a large windmill built in the middle of the ruins, now also a ruin itself).