So I've never done anything for Lent. Part of this is I didn't grow up in a church tradition that talked much about it. After just a couple of years in a crazy Anglican church where they actually follow the church calendar, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it, how to enter into it.
Lent always sneaks up on me and I find myself frantically trying to figure out what I should give up. It feels like I'm just grasping at straws. So eventually what I give up is Lent itself. Giving up Lent for Lent--not exactly what those pesky church fathers had in mind, I don't think.
It's not that I don't find value in fasting and introspection and all that. It's not Lent's fault that I can't figure out how to find my groove with it. I'm just still growing up into it.
Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter when Jesus enters into Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna!" from the thronging crowd, also befuddles me. I cannot suspend my knowledge of the duplicity of this same crowd that will yell "Crucify!" in just a few days in order to celebrate this entry as all that triumphal.
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday all have rich and powerful histories of celebration, mourning, remembrance, meditation, contemplation...and ultimately the joy and relief and wonder of Easter morning itself.
Of course, like Christmas and many other annual celebrations, there are some years when I deeply resonate with the season and fully enter in: heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. And there are years when I wake up the Monday after Easter and feel like I missed the whole thing. Maybe if I figured out this Lent thing I'd have fewer of those Mondays-after.
But there's one day that's sort of a hole in this entire celebration that year in and year out I almost never fail to resonate with: Easter Saturday. It is the day in between loss and redemption. It is a day of waiting. It is a day of dreams deferred and confusion and hiding and wandering aimlessly. It is a day for seeking solace in friends. It is a day to be alone with your thoughts.
But mostly it's waiting--what's next? What now? Is everything over?
Easter Saturday, this waiting, wondering, longing, hurting day...this day almost never fails to resonate with me. Easter Saturday never fails to capture me.
I think Easter Saturday is the day that is most universal. Easter Saturday is where we live most of our lives. It's the day in between the pain inflicted and the promised healing, fully realized. It's the space in between the already and the not yet that so marks our experience as Christians.
I think most of us spend most of our lives in Easter Saturday's waiting, hoping, wondering if God will show up, trying to figure out what God's doing in the messes and mixed bags that we call our lives.
And so I'm pleading for a real name for Easter Saturday: Silent Saturday, Waiting Saturday...something, I'm happy to take nominations from the floor. It's too significant a day to miss out on. There's opportunity to enter into Easter from a fresh angle here. Or at least, it feels that way to me.
In the mean time, I'd also take nominations from the floor on what to give for Lent '10. Maybe if I start thinking about it now, I'll finally be in a place to get my Lenten groove on next time around.
You may or may not want to cover your eyes.
4 comments:
Alex, I was glad to read your comment about the duplicity of Palm Sunday. This year, for the first time really, the irony of the "triumphal" entry struck me. I was befuddled myself (and wrote my own blog post about it!)--glad to know someone as wise as you has similar confused thoughts ;)
May you have a blessed Easter weekend, Saturday and all.
I think it is technically called 'Holy Saturday'. But I like Silent Saturday.
I never knew that it was called "Holy Saturday." Interesting.
but I do have a suggestion. I looked up "waiting" in hebrew:
Qavah (kaw-vaw)
to wait, look for, hope, expect
to collect, bind together
And there's a good, and particularly relevant, passage in Isaiah that uses this word for waiting:
And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples,
Even the veil which is stretched over all nations.
He will swallow up death for all time,
And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,
And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;
For the LORD has spoken.
And it will be said in that day,
"Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us.
This is the LORD for whom we have waited;
Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation."
Isaiah 25:7-9
Qavah Saturday... that's my suggestion. :)
Qavah Saturday. I like it.
Thanks, Whitney, for joining me in the confusion. Thanks Elizabeth for filling us in on actual facts.
And thanks, Amanda, for a great place for us to land on Holy/Silent/Qavah Saturday.
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