Tomb Time

– P.K. Benbow

The Wild Reed’s 2023 Holy Week series continues with a third excerpt from Marianne Williamson’s 2004 book The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life (To start at the beginning of this series, click here.)

There is metaphysical meaning to the three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. It symbolizes the time it takes for the physical world to catch up with a change in consciousness, for light to ascend again after darkness has overwhelmed us. Resurrection occurs when we hold to love despite appearances and thus invoke a miracle.

Sometimes when we have been deeply wounded, there’s time during which we have to let our souls bleed, take the pain, and wait till the cycle completes itself. You can’t rush a river or a heartbreak. Just know that “this too shall pass.”

The three days is referred to by a friend of mine as “tomb time.” during which it might seem that all hope is lost, when in fact the miracle is just around the corner. Every night is followed by a new day. The ego has its way with us in cruel and vicious ways, to be sure, yet we are delivered by God each day to a new morning – the “promised land” of inner peace.

We have all known crucifixion and then lived through a tomb time when it seemed as though the light in our lives might never return. Yet the movement of the universe is always in the direction of ultimate love; in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The ego roars, but God will always have the final say.

Our crucifixions deal us a material blow, but in the hands of God the blow can become a spiritual gift. No matter what occurs in our lives, we can become better people because of it. . . . Crucifixion can take us into the darkness of the soul, where we wrestle with the demons of shame and loathing, anger and hatred. We are asked to die to so many parts of ourselves – to lay down both sword and shield, to give up judgment and willfullness and hate. Yet when we stand naked, having forgiven so much, we can feel a sense of lightness return to our hearts, and we know we have made it to another place. Crucifixion is never the end, it is just the beginning.

With every scar, we become carriers of the universal wound as well as transmitters of a universal healing. When we have suffered and transcended our suffering, we emerge with sacred knowledge embedded in our cells. In our life at least, some darkness has been overcome. And we will be led to others who have similarly overcome, as well as to those who have not yet but will be inspired to in our presence. Together, we will form a unified field of resurrective possibility, an opening that does not just bless our own lives but the entire world. And that is what is occuring on the planet today. People are feeling the pain of the world, almost like an inoculation. We are hurrying to rise up so we can create a higher field for everyone.

The women around Jesus waited and prayed at his feet while he was crucified. These women symbolize the friends who bear witness to our crucifixions and care about our suffering. When they go to the tomb to claim the body – that is, when they have empathized with our pain and now accompany us on our psychic journey back to wholeness – they often find that the person we were before no longer exists, that’s true, but who we will be now is a spirit reborn and refreshed. The fever has broken, the tears have dried, and we emerge again into the light of our true being. Such is the resurrection, the light of God upon our souls.

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from The Gift of Change:
Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life
HarperCollins, 2004
pp. 189-192

NEXT: He Is Risen, and So Are You


See also the previous The Wild Reedposts:
• Within the Mystery, a Strange and Empty State of Suspension
• When Love Entered Hell
• The Passion of Christ – Jesus Among the Dead
• Chadwick Boseman and That “Heavenly Light”