Easter Saturday

In her book, The Celtic Wheel of the Year, Tess Ward (ISBN 978 1 905047 95 6) offers prayers for each month and each day of the week. Her Saturday prayers for April speak of a God who goes ahead, who enters the 'nightmare landscape', who visits all places and there is no place not visited. One of her prayers therefore concludes: there is no place that you have not visited with your light of way-through. The imagery of her prayers were particularly powerful for me as I was using them at the time I was sitting with my father during his final days here.

I offer you this reflection:

In the nightmare landscape
when the darkness
hides the chink, the crack,
the seam, the glimmer of light
The dark place seems so dark
and hope is hard to maintain.
There seems no ending,
no escape.
The darkness pervades all.
Yet you have visited it
Your Friday and Saturday
were spent there.
The darkness did not overcome
your light.
In the nightmare landscape faith
draws from your Friday and Saturday,
And waits the glimmer of
Easter dawn.

(Photo of part of a sculpture entitled On The Bench by Mackenzie Thorpe)