A Blessing for Holy Saturday

By Jan Richardson

Holy Saturday. This is the day that calls us to breathe. This is the day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache. This is the day that calls us to hold our anguish and our hope in the same hand. This is the day that beckons us to turn toward one another and to remember we do not breathe alone.

________________

In the Breath, Another Breathing

A Blessing for Holy Saturday
Let it be

that on this day
we will expect
no more of ourselves
than to keep
breathing
with the bewildered
cadence
of lungs that will not
give up the ghost.

Let it be
we will expect
little but
the beating of
our heart,
stubborn in
its repeating rhythm
that will not
cease to sound.

Let it be
we will
still ourselves
enough to hear
what may yet
come to echo:
as if in the breath,
another breathing;
as if in the heartbeat,
another heart.

Let it be
we will not
try to fathom
what comes
to meet us
in the stillness
but simply open
to the approach
of a mystery
we hardly dared
to dream.

– Jan Richardson
From Circle of Grace: A Book of
Blessings for the Seasons
Wanton Gospeller Press
2015

See also the related Wild Reed posts:
• Within the Mystery, a Strange and Empty State of Suspension
• When Love Entered Hell
• The Passion of Jesus – Jesus Among the Dead
• A Wretched Death, a Wretched Burial
• The Unthinkable
• A Brave Hope

Artwork: Michael O'Brien