in the Tension
In the Christian Church today is kept as Holy Saturday. Actually, truthfully though, the day is seldom to never "kept" or even marked at all, but that's the name we give to the day: Holy Saturday. Centered between Good Friday and Easter Day, it's a day of silence, maybe a day of cutting flowers and bringing them to the cemetery to lay on the grave, outside the sealed tomb. If yesterday was a day of shock, this is a day of grief setting in, walking out through the cemetery gate to wander aimlessly down the road.
Maybe a day of contemplating how we humans treat each other. I appreciated the concluding words of Fr Rohr's meditation for today:
Armas invites us to consider:
What moments of sacred tension stand out in your life? What did they speak to you about your humanity?
If Holy Saturday makes me realize that there is sacred tension between my considered support for Israel and the child in the picture*, little more needs to be thought or said except that no matter what I do, think, or say, I cannot be right. Which brings to mind a movie line from long ago** to the effect, "You are so obsessed with what is Right that you cannot see what is Good."
IDK.
T88&c
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Thirteen Summary
Week Thirteen Practice
Lingering in the Tension
Author Kat Armas reflects on the spiritual practice of lingering in the tension between winter and spring, the cross and resurrection:
You know those last few weeks before spring, when winter is trying desperately to hold on, her bony fingers cold and frail, losing their grip to the warmth of the sun? The trees towering above your head might still be bare, but when you look down, buds of purple are sprinkled across the ground, bursting forth from earth’s womb….
If we pay close attention, we might notice the earth constantly beckoning us to receive this gift. On bended knees with cool breath and a warm touch, the natural world asks us to stay in this moment. Right here. A little longer.
Do you feel it?...
The life and death of Jesus offers an invitation to sit in a sacred tension, but many are not comfortable doing this. We are a people hell-bent on fix-its, uncomfortable with struggle or with sadness. Perhaps this is why, for many of us, Holy Saturday has long been ignored. This is the day between the death of Christ on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. In the immigrant Catholic church I attended with abuela [grandma] growing up, this holy day of waiting was as important as Easter Sunday because it mirrored our reality—the constant push and pull between sorrow and joy, death and resurrection. On this day, we lit velas (candles) and sat in front of the altar for what felt like years. We knew joy would come, but there was no rush. The holy tension was a space in which we felt most alive. I didn’t know it back then, but la Espíritu Santa [Holy Spirit] was forming something sacred in me.
Armas invites us to consider:
What moments of sacred tension stand out in your life? What did they speak to you about your humanity?
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* Pic: A nine-year-old Palestinian boy experiencing malnutrition, evacuated from northern Gaza to an International Medical Corps field hospital in Rafah. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images.
** IDK, was it maybe "Rain Man" or maybe "Baby Doll" - - ? In my mind's eye I think I see Karl Malden in the scene, so maybe it was "Baby Doll."