Word no longer
Noticing while we were in SoWalton that I like to sit and write in a quiet place apart, Ray put a chair for me here in the corner of our bedroom, beside the front window that looks out on what's happening. Small park across the street, views of construction in every direction. Who designed this development had families in mind and did a marvelous thing, a good work. Peacefulness returns: back in Bay County is doubtless part of it, but this, living here, is a good thing and place for my now, penultimate to, hopefully, return to 7H in due course; but specifically today for Holy Saturday.
Which I've been contemplating. At Trinity, it was a day and Time for quietly anticipating the large crowd that would show up outside the church late afternoon early evening to light the high flame in the bowl on the front porch, then the candle, and process up the aisle toward the Altar that Linda had already decorated beyond splendiferously, pausing to acclaim, "the Light of Christ" and ... Early in our Time there, it was usual to have show up, a few friends and former parishioners from our church in Pennsylvania, who missed us and we them. Some thirty-five years ago, mid to late nineteen-eighties, not all, some likely yet alive, but, word coming to us about aging, illness and dying, most of them are dead now and word no longer comes. Which returns me to Holy Saturday.
From seminary days, both students and professors, conversations on balance more tentative than light, that it was a day when no one was in charge of the universe; that has stayed with me. Particularly over against the theology professor's (Jenson also is dead, a world-famous Lutheran theologian and author who, perhaps not so strange or odd, according to his obituary that I found, was an Episcopalian in his old age, Anglicanism opens many even all doors and windows) constant postulating that, Creation having come into being through Logos the Word, that if the Word ever stopped speaking, not only would we, Creation, the universe, cease to be, but for all intents, thoughts and memories, counter-anamnesis-ly in eternal terms would never have been.
Just so on Holy Saturday, the Logos dead and entombed, why did/does all not cease? But then for those of us who think about Time mindful of our travels to Narnia and back, or perhaps A Wrinkle in Time*, perhaps there indeed was/is a day in Hell or the place of departed spirits, more likely of timeless oblivion from which we return completely unaware, like my coming back from total anesthesia following heart surgery. Now asleep in Jesus, Jenson knows for sure. Or, rather, in a non place of non dreaming, he waits.
Why do I wander this morning? It being my blog, I needn't explain, but I myself wonder. Bothered by various and sundry theological concepts of Holy Saturday, early this morning I spent reading several essays about the event, some links below, all worthy. For me the day has become Time to contemplate the non-Time we name Eternity as I watch and wait in a place that is perfect for just that: a room of myself alone, looking out at life in a world from which no sound comes back to me, only silence behind insulated glass and blinds behind which I cannot be seen, again, a world of life of blue and cloudy sky, green things and people moving, doing, thinking, loving, hating, certain and pondering, over which I no longer have any control or say whatsoever, but only can observe. Earnestly do I pray that my own Holy Saturday is not like this, but the oblivion that I have neither known nor observed, only returned from.
From the kitchen, a hopeful aroma of Easter brunch at church as Linda bakes cookies.
T+
https://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2011/04/living-through-holy-saturday-bruce-epperly-04-15-2011
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/learning-to-wait-in-the-dark_b_5175191
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/church-in-contradiction-living-in-holy-saturday/10099304
* Madeleine L'Engle, and her wonderfully mind-bending book that I read so many years ago is far, far superior to the film that I found entirely unrewarding