Most of us have suffered through the death and loss of someone we love.
But I suspect very few of us have suffered through the violent death of someone we love whose loss has meant the end of hope and ushered in fear for our own survival.
But on this in-between day long ago, the disciples of Jesus must have been stunned with shock, grief and fear. They didn’t know what the next day would bring.
Us Christians, God’s fools, we wait for hope resurrected. We have been taught it will come. We get on with our day’s chores, or entertain family. Perhaps we have planned what Easter Sunday service to attend, brought flowers into the house. For us, this is what Richard Rohr refers to in his meditation today as a liminal space:
Limen is the Latin word for threshold. A “liminal space” is the crucial in-between time when everything actually happens and yet nothing appears to be happening. It is the waiting period when the cake bakes, the actual movement is made, the real transformation takes place. One cannot just jump from Friday to Sunday in this case, there must be a Saturday! It is the liminal waiting time, which is of course not a negative waiting at all, but a making of inner space so there will be room and desire for Much Greater Things.
The disciples didn’t know they were making an inner space. They simply sat through their Sabbath with their minds and hearts drowning in agony.
Image by babasteve
Elsewhere:
I haven’t been reading many blogs this week, I’ve rather drawn into myself. But here is a rich abundance of Easter beauty and pathos: Barefoot toward the Light, Shattered Grace, Diamonds in the Sky with Lucy, A Seat at the Table, Towanda’s Window, Don’t Eat Alone. I am so grateful to be part of this online community of thoughtfulness and grace.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
How enlightening. I hadn’t thought of today in those terms.
Thank you, Tess!
Hugs!
There is a line in a poem I studied in high school that never left me — as silent as the mouth of one just dead. I think of it on Holy Saturday. I think I want to keep a deep silence this day. There is an intriguing post by Lisa Fullam at dotCommonweal.org that asks us for images to describe the waiting in this liminal time. How would we each describe it?
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=7667
And those thoughts by Richard Rohr moved me as well.
Yes today is a special day — agonizing when we spend time with the disciples, tingling with silent expectation when we wait outside the tomb. I very much like your post, as well as the quote you entered on Sacred Graffiti. Barbara’s as silent as the mouth of one just dead feels just right as well.
I also liked Rohr’s other comment for today: The tomb becomes a womb today, waiting for rebirth — a womb for Him and for each one of us, if we so desire.
Thank you for everything, Tess.
PS: I also ‘am so grateful to be part of this online community of thoughtfulness and grace.’ And it will expand now that you recommend some blogs I did not know. Thank you for this
))
it’s a blessing to journey with you, Tess…
Yes … Happy to be “Fools for Christ”. Bless you and yours.
Thank you all for these thoughtful comments, and Barbara for the link.
Audrey, a warm welcome to my blog.
I didn’t know what to do with this post. It was almost shocking, because I actually have “suffered through the violent death of someone we love whose loss has meant the end of hope and ushered in fear for our own survival.” In some ways, there has been a long part of my life that has been liminal space, because of this occurrence.
I am not Christian and I came upon your blog and read it as part of larger readings I do that encompass all different spiritual beliefs. I enjoy your writing and your thoughtfulness.
This particular post I’m going to need more time thinking about. Thank you.
Anonymous, thank you so much for your comment, it must have been difficult to write.
When I drafted this post it did cross my mind to wonder whether anyone reading might have had an experience similar to this monstrous story of his disciples witnessing Christ’s torture and death. There are certainly many around the world in what the media so euphemistically call “trouble spots”.
I think I supposed that most of the people likely to be reading this would have suffered the agony of bereavement, which is part of living, but without the dimension of the beloved being a leader whose loss exposes his followers, for political reasons, to similar torture and death. (Hence Peter’s denial of him.)
Perhaps I was too one-dimensional in my supposing.
In Christian faith, we often forget that no-one knew at the time there would be joy at the end of the sorrow (leaving aside for a moment all debates about the veracity of the physical resurrection). I wanted to explore that historical dimension in which no-one had the benefit of hindsight.
Thank you for what you said, and I’m sorry that what I wrote caused you pain.
Tess, I’m sort of catching up on my reading and find this post relevant to me. The “waiting” when “regular” life somehow goes on seems almost sacrilegious in hindsight – as though we could not sit with our beloved for the pain to integrate itself totally into our being. I think that we are created as resilient beings, part of our DNA; that DNA business, sort of gives us permission to depart from the grief for moments at a time. I’ve often questioned how it is or why it is that we have to go through, or for heaven’s sake, why Jesus had to go through the agony of such a cruel death and why must we remember it again and again. The usual answer is that the gift and promise of resurrection would not be too big a deal if we hadn[‘t gone through the darkness prior to its happening. I’m NOT sure that God planned such miserable end to his presence physically living in humankind – but our Creator certainly had the last laugh it seems in denying that death could destroy his Being. Thanks for a beautiful post and Happy Easter Tuesday!
xo
SS: Happy Easter Tuesday to you as well!