Scargill Scribbles 2 - Living Holy Saturday

  Living Holy Saturday

‘Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord… I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in his word I hope, my soul waits for the Lord more than those that watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning,’

Psalm 103:1,5-6

Those who’ve read previous blog posts might have read of what I’ve shared of my current experience of living with depression. For me it’s been an experience that, in many ways, mirrors that of this unusual holy day. I sit (physically and metaphorically) with a cross before me, with glimmers of hope in the signs of spring; yet needing to wait in the midst of the numbness, the confusion, the pain and sorrow.

Jackie Riley one of the members of the pastoral team at Scargill (where we are experiencing this Holy weekend) lead a session exploring Holy Saturday, for me, it was helpful, expressing some of my own experiences but also to put together some of the pieces that have been somewhat disconnected – not to make a perfect picture but to be at least held together.

As part of the session Jackie asked us what symbol we might use for this day?

For Good Friday we have the cross, thorns and nails... for Easter Sunday we have eggs and angels, flowers and spring symbols but what about now?

For me my experience of depression has meant living with a numbness, with questions and doubts, frustrations and uncertainties and today I’ve found a new resonance in the ‘nothingness’ of this day a day scripture tells us little, if anything of. A day of in-between... What must Jesus’ followers of thought, felt experienced?

From the early days of acknowledging my depression I’ve known that God was at work within it. I’d never lost hope completely, I’d never ceased to know that there would be true joy again, even if I couldn’t currently encounter them. But I’ve been keen to not jump what feels like a season of change, not to move to quick answers or fixes, to health and wellbeing. I seek those things certainly and am grateful for all that helps me along that road, but who was it that said something of the journey being as important as the destination…? 

For me there is something of the journey of this time. Something of being both a ‘Good Friday’ and an ‘Easter Person’ something that I’ve known to be true; but I’ve also been and know something more fully of that experience of Holy Saturday – caught between the two – not in the desperation and desolation of Friday but also certainly not in the glorious hope of Easter. We are ‘Easter People’ and ‘Good Friday people’ but also maybe we are called to be ‘Saturday people’?

George Steiner says:

‘Ours is a long day’s journey of the Saturday . Between suffering, aloneness and unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, of rebirth the other.’

God of Friday pain and Sunday hope
God of the empty Saturday
God of the beginning and the end
God of the pain and sorrow, the anguish and confusion.
God of hope and hopelessness
God of all endings and all new beginnings
May your great story speak to ours.
May your embracing of the fullness of our humanity enable us to enter the fullness of your life
May we know glimpses of hope in our Good Fridays.
Enter into the space and gaps of our Holy Saturdays.
Transform our Sundays not be those of glib or simple hope but to be those of transforming grace and joy.
 God of all days,
of heights and depths,
of our living and our dying
continue the transformation of Easter in us.