Good Friday—why is it called “good”? At first glance it commemorates a day of immense suffering: the crucifixion of Christ, a figure of extraordinary significance for so many. How could such a day be “good”? Historically, the term may come from an older English sense: “God’s Friday.” Spiritually, it also reflects the ultimate good arising from the Passion: salvation through suffering, through someone atoning for everything you have done wrong on this planet. Both meanings converge in the idea of a journey through darkness toward light—a theme I experienced in two very different, yet profoundly connected ways this Good Friday.
In the morning, we visited the Crystal Palace subway. This is no ordinary passage or even US style underground; it is a Victorian underpass built between 1854 and 1858, once linking the high-level railway station, demolished in the 1960’s to the fairytale world of the Crystal Palace itself, which sadly burned down in 1936’s devastating fire.. The railway line that connected the station eventually fell into disuse, its tracks lifted, its tunnels abandoned. As children, living close-by, we explored these tunnels, finding adventure in the forgotten, lawless spaces well away from the strictures of our parents. Rave parties, secret gatherings, the scent of oriental herbs and the thrill of discovery transformed these abandoned corridors into an alternative world.
Now, restored and preserved, the subway still exudes magic. Walking through it, passing under arches, along tiled walls, moving through rhythmical repetition and variation, one senses a hunt—a pursuit of knowledge, beauty, and wonder. Are we wandering through a mosque in Cordoba, the undercroft of a Sienese abbey, the imaginings of Byzantine patriarchs? The artful tiling of the largely Tuscan craftsmen who fashioned these arches put all these thoughts to my mind.

Emerging from the subway and entering into the Italian gardens now echoing to the rumblings of machinery helping to restore them to the glory they once had under Albert the Prince Consort who contributed to their design we came across two enormous Egyptian sphinxes standing or rather lying as silent witnesses reflecting on the past and contemplating the unknown future. They were like guardians of imagination, monuments to mystery, and a reminder that even if the Crystal Palace itself is no more its magic persists.

In the afternoon, we entered another journey: Bach’s St John Passion at St George’s Hanover Square, that elegant witness to London’s eighteenth century architecture and an area well known to musicians like Handel and Bach’s own son who had their homes and held their concerts there. In this place the darkness is musical, emotional, and spiritual. The St John Passion although often overshadowed by the grander St Matthew Passion remains sublime and one of my favourite pieces of music ever. If the Saint Matthew is a meditative take on the Passion the Saint John casts a realistic insight. From the obsessively throbbing bass and suspenseful oboes of the opening chorus to the extraordinary oboe da caccia, the hunting oboe, double-reeded, lower-toned and strangely curved, to the lullaby-like ending chorus (so beautiful!) the music immerses you fully; the liturgical setting it had at last night’s performance with preacher, sermon and congregational hymn singing made us feel we were truly participants enacting the whole drama with tangible emotion. The singers, the musicians could not have been bettered. The hunting horn’s woody voice seems to imitate the human voice. We were plunged into the Passion with the chorus’s cries of the mob, Pilate’s puzzlement, and the sequence of reflective, mournful, joyous and angelic arias accompanied by such varied instrumentation.. Like the hunt through the subway or the pursuit of spaceship Artemis toward the moon, I was reminded that we are ever in a hunt, a search for meaning, for truth, for finding the real purpose of life itself.

Comparing this experience to the way we have spent Good Friday in Italy adds another dimension. In Castiglione di Garfagnana, a walled medieval town, we witnessed the Via Crucis—the reenactment of Christ’s last journey through the streets. Chains clanked, figures processed, hooded and mysterious and the medieval town became almost biblical in its atmosphere. Here, too, we were participants, not mere spectators. We followed Christ through the streets as part of a living liturgy, just as in Bach’s Passion we joined in hymns and immersed ourselves in sound. Two cultures, two expressions, yet converging on the same event—humanity reflecting on the Passion, its suffering, and its hope.
The parallel is profound. Both the subway and the Passion, both Castiglione and London, are structured journeys from darkness into light. One through space and architecture, one through music and emotion; one through streets and ritual, one through sound and participation. In each, we hunt for insight, for beauty, for transcendence. In each, we are active participants, co-creators of meaning and experience.
Even beyond Earth, this hunting continues. Reflecting on that spacecraft named after the Grecian goddess of hunting hurtling its way to our only natural satellite we continue our literal and metaphorical journey into the unknown and the pursuit of discovery that of the world’s and perhaps more importantly our own.

On this Good Friday, we experienced multiple hunts: through Victorian corridors, through Bach’s orchestration, through packed streets, through opulent arcades, through underground tunnels, through verdant squares and toward the heavens themselves.
London, with its endless variety, offers this one commanding pursuit. Moving from the subway to the Passion in one day was an adventure in itself. We were hunters of experience, seekers of meaning, participants in the living rhythm of the city. As Dr. Johnson said, “He who is tired of London is tired of life.” May we never tire of life, never tire of hunting for beauty, magic, and understanding. In music, architecture, ritual, and the cosmos. Every journey through darkness into light, every pursuit of the unknown, is profoundly—and wonderfully—good. Yesterday was truly a Good Friday in all senses of that word.