Instead of rushing to a desired new future we must often dwell in a state of unknowing. In between crucifixion and resurrection is a long waiting period and I’ve never been good at waiting. How about you?

Today’s message from the Center for Action and Contemplation comes from Dr. Christine Valters Paintner of the Abbey of the Arts. Highlights below address the liminal space of moving from a painful past to a new future … from letting go “of things, people, identities, or securities” and wondering “what will rise up out of the ashes of our lives.”

Lingering In-Between 

Christine Valters Paintner invites us to the patience necessary to receive the wisdom of Holy Saturday:  

For me, Holy Saturday evokes much about the human condition. It helps us examine the ways we are called to let go of things, people, identities, or securities. We wonder what will rise up out of the ashes of our lives…. 

Instead of rushing to resurrection, we must dwell in the space of unknowing. We must hold death and life in tension. One day, we can help others live through these scary and tense landscapes. The wisdom of the Triduum is that we must be fully present to both the starkness of Friday and the Saturday space between before we can really experience the Resurrection. We must know the terrible experience of loss wrought in our world. This pain can teach us more when the promise of new life dawns, and we will appreciate its light because we know the darkness….  

Much of our lives are spent in Holy Saturday places but we spend so much energy resisting, longing for resolution and closure. Our practice this day is to really enter into the liminal zone, to be present to it with every cell of our being.  

Honor the mystery. 

Reference:   
[1] Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within (Sorin Books, 2015), 122–123.