Easter worshippers at Jones Beach

In the cold and dark of 6 a.m. Sunday, Juanita Maltese, a teacher from Williston Park, stood almost alone on the sands of Jones Beach, waiting for the sun to appear.

She had come because she "needed something . . . I'm religious, but I'm not into churches."

For some 35 years, worshippers on Long Island have marked Easter with a sunrise service organized by the Long Island Council of Churches. They came Sunday morning, a couple hundred of them wearing sweatshirts and wrapped in blankets against the cold, and formed a circle Maltese joined.

The reading was from Mark and the sermon was given by the Rev. Adrian Pratt of the First Presbyterian Church of Baldwin. "How can we be Sunday people in a Friday world?" was his theme.

"You remember what Jesus said and did and you do it," he said, standing on the sand as the sun peered over the calm ocean. "You reach out with love. You feed the hungry. You lift up the poor. You seek justice for those who are denied it. You bind up the brokenhearted.

"Even though we sometimes struggle to believe, even though we have our doubts, nevertheless we are going to live and work and act out of an attitude for gratitude," Pratt said.

The sun was up when the service finished and afterward three friends lingered by the water: Margaret Kenneally of Bellmore and Doris Nolan and Marge Hecker, both of Wantagh.

Kenneally and Nolan -- "we're churchy people, what can we tell you" -- had already attended a Saturday night Easter Vigil.

But it had been Hecker's idea to come to Jones Beach. She was not religious, she said, but explained, "I did something I know my friends like to do; I feel good about it."