Framing the Silence

Using the Lord’s Prayer to help us keep Holy Saturday

This day is perhaps the day of the Tridium which I appreciate most.  The silence of it.  The anticipation.  The space to hold in God’s presence the difficult, fearful, painful, broken things of my life and the world’s life.

This day permits the silence of waiting.  All those things we are waiting for in our lives.  Waiting in faith for relationships to improve, for jobs to be more fulfilling, for healing, for a difficult project to be at an end, for governments to administer true justice, for evil to be exposed, space to hold all of these difficult things in the love of God who descended to world of shades to break open death and to redeem its stolen treasures.

It is hard to keep vigil through a day without some sort of framework.  I would like to offer you today the Lord’s Prayer as a framework for the day.  The whole day, or in cycles three or four or more times during the day.

​

It may be helpful for some of us to have something to look at, an icon, a cross, objects that represent different parts of the Lord’s Prayer, pebbles or simple beads to hold and/or fiddle with as we ponder.

Take each phrase on its own and sit with it, listening with your inner ears and looking with your inner eyes.  Your prayer may be the silence of simply holding the phrase; the silence of listening and looking.  Your prayer may be a cry of lament, of frustration, of despair at things ever changing.  Your prayer may be the feeling of emotion, held in the presence or feeling absence of God.  Your prayer may be a peaceful holding of intention in God’s presence.

Take each phrase and sit with it a while.