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Based on sermons originally delivered by Bishop Tom Wright during Easter 2007.
This is a book for Lent that uses the story of a coal-mining town in northern England as a modern parable for loss and rebirth.
On 30 April 1993, the last coal was drawn from Easington Colliery in County Durham. The pit was razed to the ground and the entire area grassed over. Where once there was a busy and highly productive pit employing thousands, there is now an eerie sense of bereavement, of the heart having been ripped out of a community. The theme of bereavement has a particular resonance for Easington Collier. One day in May 1951, just as the night shift was leaving and the early morning shift arriving, there was a large underground explosion. Families and friends gathered at the pit gates, and gradually the news emerged that eighty-one miners and two rescue workers had died. The last body was not brought out for over a fortnight.
What has the Easter story to say to the people of Easington? Can it offer any more than the comfort of a well-worn tale?
Tom Wright, their Bishop, attempted to answer these questions when he spent Holy Week 2007 at the village. He led meditations and discussed, and sought out signs of hope. His inspiring yet down-to-earth words, recorded here in The Cross And The Colliery, take us on a journey through bereavement and grief to the foot of the cross, and beyond to Easter hope.
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