The prophet Jeremiah (in the book LAMENTATIONS) looks out on chaos and ruin, but the backbone of his poem is a dogged, tearful statement of faith in God's order and purpose.
That is the strange sort of waiting to which Holy Saturday summons us and it's a call that many communities, and many individuals, badly need to hear today, both in the forgotten wastelands of our post-industrial landscape and in the equivalent rustbelt within our hearts and our memories and our imaginations. Somewhere between nihilistic atheism on the one hand and a glib, chatty, easy-going religion on the other there is a different sort of thing, something deeper and darker that simultaneously refuses to despair even as it refuses cheap and shallow solutions. Again and again, in the communities where we live and in our personal lives, we are called to be Holy Saturday people, not because we've forgotten about Easter but because we don't yet know what form Easter is going to take in this particular moment of sorrow. --Tom Wright
