Neither Here Nor There

It's late in the day, Holy Saturday. Many churches are well into their Easter Vigil services; but I've been pondering the emptiness of Holy Saturday all day today. It's in between-ness. To be neither here nor there is to be in a place. The tomb is the place. And, it's a time. Saturday is the day.

The place and the day are well known to most of us. You've been there. Anyone who has moved from death to life knows this place. It's darkness, it's coldness, it's numbness--deadness, you might say. That place where you find yourself when you have let go of the old and not yet embraced (or been embraced by) the new. You knew that to continue as you had was death. So, finally you ungrasped your tightly clutched fingers, and let go. And the deathliness that had been your way of life began to leave you. Yet, you had no idea, really, what new life would look like.

One time I remember in my own life was when I moved toward an intervention with my husband about his drinking. I moved because I knew that to continue as we had would be death. But I had no idea of how new life might look. I could not imagine him, really, without a drink in his hand. That was beyond me. And, thanks be to God, he did choose to go into treatment and emerged a new person in important ways. We're no longer married, but I've been privileged to see him now for many years without a drink in his hand--living a full and compassionate life. But there was a time there, when the old had been discarded but the new had not yet arrived. A time of uncertainty. Holy Saturday: neither here nor there.

And then there was the time when I let go of being a priest in the church. I'd been in ministry for a longish kind of time, and my identity was enmeshed in being a priest. But I found myself in a place and a time when I couldn't live with integrity and function in the church as a priest. So I let go. It was painful. Many tears were shed. I talked with my spiritual director about the shifting sands of the exodus beneath my feet. I can still remember that feeling. I'd let go, but what was coming toward me? To what was I being called to open myself?  Holy Saturday was the place I lived in; the tomb and its darkness.

So, to me this day marks one of the holiest of times. A time essential. A time and place where God's grace is seemingly distant, perhaps--but a time and a place where the deepest transfigurations take place, take hold. Where lives are being made new. The tomb is a place calling on our capacity to trust--to trust the letting go, the dying to, and to trust the new life that comes--with no clear vision really of what that might be.

I think of the souls like Abram and Sarai setting out on their journey; Ruth, following Naomi, Mary saying yes to the angel, Paul setting out blind for Ananias--the list goes on and on. These are folks who knew this day. Holy Saturday.

They knew the in-between-ness of life. The neither here nor there-ness of it. It's an honorable place and time. You can entrust yourself to it. Without it there is no new life. It's the place we all dwell in and the time we breathe in.