I am grateful for these words from Jan Richardson. Holy Saturdays are always uniquely quiet. All motion seems to slow or stop. There is a strong desire for connection as the earth still shakes under our feet.
“On this Holy Saturday, I have been thinking about how this is not a day for answers. It is a threshold day, a day that lies between, and so resists any easy certainty. It is a day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache. It is a day that beckons us to turn toward one another and to remember we do not breathe alone.”
IN THE BREATH, ANOTHER BREATHING
For Holy Saturday
Let it be
that on this day
we will expect
no more of ourselves
than to keep
breathing
with the bewildered
cadence
of lungs that will not
give up the ghost.
Let it be
we will expect
little but
the beating of
our heart,
stubborn in
its repeating rhythm
that will not
cease to sound.
Let it be
we will
still ourselves
enough to hear
what may yet
come to echo:
as if in the breath,
another breathing;
as if in the heartbeat,
another heart.
Let it be
we will not
try to fathom
what comes
to meet us
in the stillness
but simply open
to the approach
of a mystery
we hardly dared
to dream.
Quote: Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
Image: “Breath Will Come to the Desolate Bones”
Carrie's Bench 