Maybe today, Silent Saturday, is the only day in the Christian calendar that I really get.

It’s the day after. Everything has changed, but you’re not sure what happens next. The hope and certainty that used to exist is dead – ended for reasons you don’t understand. This new landscape unfamiliar and uncomfortable. This day makes sense to me.

With hindsight it’s the day in-between.

But for now, it’s just the day after.

Today I could be/am a Christian with none of the usual disclaimers. Today I can own the questions and grief and uncertainty. Today I can admit my fear of not knowing what happens now or what will happen tomorrow.

Today my head and my heart match the calendar – more sorrow, less joy.

This day makes sense to me.

I’ve lived in the space of this silent Saturday for almost 5 years, different variations of it but at the heart still the same – the world as you know it has changed, God is seeming silent and aloof, or dead. Its now both a familiar and uncomfortable home.

I’ve learned that there are few answers to be found, just a growing awareness of the more I know, the more I realise how little I know. I’m learning to sit through the discomfort of everything changing and all the feels it brings with it – whether I can name them or not.

It’s a trudging through the mud kinda space. In my wisdom (foolishness) I’ve signed up to another long long walk challenge. As everyone is out training the challenge facebook group is full of discussions about mud – how muddy the different courses are, the best waterproof socks and the best tactics for dealing with it. Most of the advice focuses on finding something to hold on to and just facing it head on. Which also seems apt for this strange silent Saturday kinda life.

“Do you trust me?” An invitation to trust is always offered. Some days its easier than others. As ever, Barbara Brown Taylor says it best:

“I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had for more to do with trust than certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world though I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved in life as in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so.”

A blessing, for all of us trudging through the mud, trying to say yes with courage to life in all its fullness, even this silent Saturday kinda life.

Blessing for a Broken Vessel

Do not despair.
You hold the memory 
of what it was to be whole.

It lives deep
in your bones.
It abides in your heart
that has been torn and mended 
a hundred times.
It persists
in your lungs
that know the mystery
of what it means 
to be full,
to be empty,
to be full again.

I am not asking you
to give up your grip
On the shards you clasp 
so close to you

But to wonder
what it would be like
for those jagged edges
to meet each other 
in some new pattern
that you have never imagined,
that you have never dared
to dream. 

Jan Richardson

I’m used to preparing for change. You learn to gather up The Lasts. The last drinks with friends before a few months abroad. The last church service before moving away. The last lunch with colleagues before a new job. I’ve found Lasts to be helpful road markers in navigating new things right alongside the sadness of saying goodbye – even if temporarily.

I was not prepared for the Lasts of the 2020 Before Times. Because had I known, we would have hung out for just a little bit longer, had another drink, taken one last selfie and the last hug goodbye would never have ended. HOW COULD WE HAVE KNOWN? And also, thank God we didn’t. Because if you’d told me what we were in for I'd have climbed into a hole in the garden and never left.

This is the last photo I took before life as we knew it was gone.

I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I'm now the kinda person who notices the magnolia trees are late to blossom this year – WHY ARE THEY DENYING US THIS JOY?! DON'T THEY KNOW WE NEED IT NOW MORE THAN EVER?!When I look back over the past 12 months I am reminded that:

• Everything happens
• Life is precarious
• I am not in control
• I need to laugh more

Not everything happens for a reason. Just, everything happens. Fullstop.

Everything happens, including all the good you can imagine and the all the bad of beyond even your worst nightmares.

Everything happens. Everything we can control and everything we can’t.

Everything happens. And God is there.

God can protect. But that doesn’t mean you will be protected. And God can heal. But that doesn’t mean you will be healed. And God can provide, but that doesn’t mean what you need will be provided.

And yet, on the very day my mind was swirling with thoughts of identity and priviledge and awkward conversations, my spiritual director started with a blessing that talked about respecting individuality and difference. HOW COULD SHE HAVE KNOWN this was what I needed to hear?

And so what are we to do with a faith that says the Great One has chosen not to save us from this thing but can also be unexpectedly present in the detail of the every day?

I don't really know.

And yet, I’m still convinced that the goodness of God is planted deeper than all that is wrong. I know that I will see the goodness of God while I am in the land of the living. And so I come back to the table - a wild feast in the presence of my doubts and fears and worries - a table for those who have much faith and those who would like to have more - a table that declares there is grace enough to go round, even here, even now. And so...

Break the bread. Pour the wine. Get comfy with complex questions and no satsifying answers.

Dear Friends, Beloved Reader,

Lockdown 3 - what can I say. We’ve said it all already no?

How you hanging on to your sanity? I’m pretty sure mine is long gone.  I've long abandoned dreaming of Chateau life and instead have succumbed to the watching say-yes-to-the-dress stage of lockdown. But I'm getting better at handstands, so, you know, win some lose some.

What is saving your life right now?

Saving mine?

• Walks. Still. Always. Especially on Sunday mornings with friends who ask the big questions and don’t expect me to have any answers.
• The Calendar of Good Things. Pizza is not guaranteed, every small thing is worth celebrating.
• Spiritual direction – space to bring all my thoughts and questions and leave with reminders of the truths I have long known but somehow forgotten. For real don’t know how I ever navigated life without it.
• Finding new spiritual practises. I know monotony can be a luxury but I am officially bored. As ever, my beloved Barbara Brown Taylor is helping me see mundane activities in a new light. But if anyone knows how I can transform general boredom into a spiritual practice LET ME KNOW.
• The refill shop now sells CRISPS – and there was great rejoicing throughout the land.
• Signs of spring and SUNSHINE.
• 80s music aerobics and dance workouts - guaranteed to get me out of bed before 7am. GOTTA GET MY MOVES SORTED FOR 21^ST JUNE PARTIES.
• Pastries and hot cross buns. Technically I gave up pastries for lent but tis lockdown sooooo….
• Reading books about WILD adventures – both soothing and aggravating my restlessness.

I find this list quite surprising. Lockdown 3 is a slog and I really didn’t think anything much was getting me through the days. As ever, turns out, the grace for the day is at work and far more prevalent than I can see in the moment.

Hang tight friends, we’re getting through.

May you take hold of God today, not tomorrow, not when its easier, but in this moment now in all the glory or mess that it brings." Commoners Communion

Break the bread. Pour the wine. Give thanks and find the things that save your life.