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Holy Saturday Meditations

Spring — Mary Oliver
 
And here is the serpent again.
Dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,
His cave under the black rocks,
His winter-death.
He loops around the bunches of rising grass,
Looking for the sun.
 
Well, who doesn’t want the sun after the long winter?
I step aside,
He feels the air with his soft tongue,
Around the bones of his body he moves like oil,
 
Downhill he goes
Towars the black mirrors of the spond.
Lastr night it was still so cold
I woke and went out to stand in the yard.
And there was no moon.
 
So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing.
An owl cried in the distance,
I thought of Jesus, how he
Crouched in the dark for two nights,
And floated back above the horizon.

SONGS about DARKNESS

POEM

While it was still dark.
While it was still night.
While she could not see.
While she thought death held sway.
While she griev
While it was still dark, resurrection began.
—   Jan Richardson

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
— Mary Oliver

Saturday— Maren Tirabassi

Today Malchus, the high priest’s slave,
is rubbing his ear,
the woman who reached out
to touch his clothing
is enjoying (of all things)
regular menstrual cramps,
a family opens the door to a child,
because of the prodigal story
was so frequently retold
at travelers’ inns and village wells,
a tribune resigns his commission,

and Jesus is preaching to the dead,
and telling them to be ready
for his well-planned prison break,

even the guy with bigger barns,
the woman whose oil burned out
at the gate of joy,
and … he just catches Judas’ eye.

It’s never a detour
when Jesus goes to hell,
and, if Easter is really every Sunday,
Saturdays always find Jesus
visiting you, me and those dear to us
who are lost in hell,

and, if we can’t find our keys,
gives us a lift.

COMMENTARY on DARKNESS

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings. —Wendell Berry
 
I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. ― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

There are two ways of passing from this world – one in light and one in darkness. When one passes in light, he does not come back; but when one passes in darkness, he returns. — The Bhagavad Gita

There is a part of the soul that stirs at night, in the dark and soundless times of day, when our defenses are down and our daylight distractions no longer serve to protect us from ourselves… It’s then, in the still of life, when we least expect it, that questions emerge from … our inner underworld…These questions do not call for the discovery of data; they call for the contemplation of possibility. — Joan Chittister

PRAYER — Daniel Tobin

There is something to be praised in repetition,
There is something to be praised in repetition,
For surely all life moves in seasons,
For surely all life moves in seasons;
Praised surely, for all there is–seasons, life–
Moves in repetition to be something.

Still desire for rest whispers in the body,
Still desire for rest whispers in the body,
Like the hint of a lost name or a nagging song,
Like the hint of a lost name or a nagging song.
Rest desires a name for the song, a hint,
Nagging, lost, like a still body in whispers.

Let me wait, a novice on nothing’s threshold,
Let me wait, a novice on nothing’s threshold,
Until the blown seed lifts on its diamond fulcrum,
Until the blown seed lifts on its diamond fulcrum.
Novice, blown fulcrum, let me lift on nothing
Until its threshold awaits the diamond seed.

Something waits for the body in whispers,
Diamond hint in seasons of repetition.
Or surely it lifts on a still fulcrum.
Let me rest, its novice, like all nagging life
Until desire moves, blown seed, nothing’s name.
There it is, Thresh-Hold, lost song to be praised.

The Peace of Wild Things — Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

POEM — Rumi

If you come to visit my grave,
My tomb will appear to dance.Brother!
Don’t come without a tambourine,f
or the sad can’t join in God’s celebration.
From every direction comes the sound of the harp,
and hue and cry from the drunk.
Every action will perforce give rise to another one.
God has created me from love’s wine;
even if death takes me, I am the same love.
I am intoxication; my origin is the wine of love.
Tell me: what comes from wine except intoxication?
Toward the lofty soul of Beloved
my soul is flying, lingering not even a single moment.

A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark — Jan Richardson

Go slow if you can. Slower. More slowly still.
Friendly dark or fearsome, this is no place to break your neck
by rushing, by running, by crashing into what you cannot see.
Then again, it is true: different darks have different tasks,
and if you have arrived here unawares,
if you have come in peril or in pain,
this might be no place you should dawdle.
I do not know what these shadows ask of you,
what they might hold that means you good or ill.
It is not for me to reckon
whether you should linger or you should leave.
But this is what I can ask for you:
That in the darkness there be a blessing.
That in the shadows there be a welcome.
That in the night you be encompassed
by the Love that knows your name.

COMMENTARY on SILENCE

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox. ― Nicholas Sparks
 
When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The gray area between yes and no. Silence. ― Dan Brown
 
Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others. ― Brennan Manning
 
It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
 
Your silence will not protect you.  ― Audre Lorde
 
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.  ― Nadezhda Mandelstam
 
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. ― Thomas Merton
 
Silence is pure and holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. ― Nicholas Sparks

I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.  ― Chaim Potok
 
Silence is so freaking loud. ― Sarah Dessen
 
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ― Ansel Adams
 
He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. ― Elbert Hubbard
 
How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. ― Virginia Woolf
 
Silence is a source of Great Strength. ― Lao Tzu
 
My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you … What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language. I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” … our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. … And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ― Audre Lorde
 
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment. ― John Steinbeck
 
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. ― Khaled Hosseini
 
In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. ― Mother Teresa
 
… you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful. ― David Levithan
 
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet…maybe we could understand something. ― Federico Fellini
 
There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard. ― Arundhati Roy
Holy Saturday Meditations
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