Waiting
Holy Saturday.
A day of suspension, and of waiting. Merton writes that on this day "the confusion of sorrow and joy is so complex that you never know where you are."
Yesterday we thought about ourselves individually, and ourselves as a species: our legacy of wars, hatred, waste, greed, senselessness and impatience, our selfishness, our lack of care for the future. The mind revolts: "But I try, I'm not a bad person!" And yet it's all around us, the evidence, the history, the news of today. And yet, in spite of all that -- Easter, a new beginning, is tomorrow. If there is one thing common to all human beings it's this capacity to hope, and to love.
It's hard though: hard to know where to begin, and hard to find the strength to act. If all we can feel is helpless, overwhelmed, and sad, then we can't be of much help to ourselves, let alone anyone else.
I've been touched this week by some of your comments and some letters I received from readers who wanted to say something privately. It means a lot to me that these posts haven't been rejected. It frustrates me to know that every one of us is, at our core, a spirtual being who longs for beauty, truth, hope, joy, and love -- but so many have been shut out by (or have deliberately left) religious institutions with their dogmas and creeds, their expectations of blind obedience, their cruel exclusions, their hierarchies and patriarchies, their wealth, and even their abuse of the most vulnerable. Some of us have turned to other paths. But more and more people today simply deny their own spirituality, and spend their entire lives in this sort of Saturday limbo, suspended between sorrow and a joyful serenity we want, but that -- except for the occasional transcendent moment -- always feels just out of reach.
Why do we find this so difficult to talk about? It's almost the last taboo at the dinnertable, worse than sex or money, for sure. Maybe writing more openly about these subjects can help open a window into a spaciousness where questions are allowed, where the fullness of each of us -- as we are, not as we feel we "ought" to be -- is allowed. I'm talking about a private space, a permission we give to ourselves, even more than a blog as a place of discussion. I think we all need a place where we can bring our doubts and hopes and faults and sorrows and the things that make us happy -- and just breathe out and in.
And then maybe say, tentatively, "If you are there, I am here."
That's all it takes, to begin, but it was one of the largest leaps I ever made. I still remember where I was and when it happened, many many years ago, when I finally gave up trying to do it all on my own. It's difficult to make that move in our hearts when we're adults, especially intellectual adults. Even terrifying. But on the other side of that movement -- on the other side of Saturday -- lies a different world which is, and has always been, waiting for us.
