I Said to My Soul Be Still

The Prayer of Unknowing

Photo by Jesus Alejandro Moron Guadarrama on Unsplash

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations–just as they are…
Rilke

A LITURGY OF PRAYER FOR HOLY WEEK: HOLY SATURDAY

Opening Prayer

Jesus began this week at Bethany, in the home of friends. He also knew himself to be deeply loved by the Father. Love is what makes this journey possible, for him and for us.

Taking three slow breaths, connect to the experience of being loved – however you do that best. Pray for the Spirit to animate and inspire as we follow Christ through Holy week.

1^st Readings

Lamentations 3.19-26

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,^*
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘therefore I will hope in him.’

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.

REFLECTION

Somewhere between the daily violence, suffering, despair, betrayals and defeats of our everyday life, and the sense and experience of true presence, consolation and new life – is Holy Saturday: the need to sit without knowing what next, the need to let go and wait.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
T.S. Eliot

This is the territory of the mystics. Both Holy Saturday and the mystics emphasise the reality and value of unknowing. Here we are invited into a silence that will take us to a knowing that can never be realised by words: a mystery that can never be found by our efforts. This liminal space is essential for gestation.

The poet David Whyte – in a poem called ‘Sweet Darkness’ writes:

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see….

Ponder and Pray

And so, return to whatever it is that you might be most aware of as you consider your life and your Holy Week journey so far. Recognise your vulnerability, the pain, the anger, the sadness, the fear – whatever is present for you. Become aware of where it sits in your body and slowly place both hands there.

It sits inside you. You’re not sure where it will go next, but for now, imagine, that it rests in the earth, held in a greater reality, a greater mystery, and a greater love.

Silent Prayer

Silent prayer is not everyone’s way, but it seems to me that it is THE prayer for Holy Saturday. In it, we practice letting go everything: our feelings and our thoughts – even our most worthy ones. That doesn’t come naturally, so we use a prayer word or a mantra to still our mind each time we find it wanders again. Silence is a humbling practice, because we fail often. Each time we return, gently, to that word or prayer sentence.

In this prayer, we trust that the Spirit intercedes ‘with groans too deep for words’. We trust that beneath all thought, feeling and experience is the ground of our being and the Love that never dies!

If you want to practice silent prayer and you don’t have a way, you might simply take the phrase, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, and gently repeat it for a period of time.

Widening the Circle

Take another few minutes to name anyone or anything else that might be on your heart, knowing that the mystery of Christ’s solidarity with suffering extends to the furthest reaches of our world.

The Lord’s Prayer

2nd Reading

You, darkness, of whom I am born–

I love you more that the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illuminates
and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations–just as they are.

It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.

I believe in the night.

Rilke

Blessing

So may we allow this day of unknowing to embrace all that we are, knowing a great presence stirs beside us. May we wait in stillness until the dance is given. May we wait in darkness until that dawn that only Christ can bring.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and evermore. Amen.

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