Vigil at the Heart of the Earth - Holy Saturday

"He was just sitting there- surrounded by the darkest, deepest, most alienated, most constricted states of pained consciousness; sitting, if we can imagine it, among all those mirroring faces of the collective false self that we encountered earlier in the crucifixion narrative: the anguish of Judas, the indecision of Pilate, the cowardice of Peter, the sanctimony of the Pharisees; sitting there in the midst of all this darkness, not judging, not fixing, just letting it be in love. And in so doing, he was allowing love to go deeper, pressing all the way to the innermost ground out of which the opposites arise, and holding that to the light."
​- Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus

"Unless a grain of what falls into the earth, and dies. It remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit."
- Jesus of Nazareth, (and an initiation ritual for the Asia Minor Mystery religions)

Holy Saturday has been a strange, ominous day for most of my life. That blank hour after the funeral service and luncheon has ended and the last plate that held sandwiches just an hour ago, is put back in the cupboard. There is an emptiness and a strange relief, and perhaps a dread that all at once, we realize life will never be the same, but it will keep going anyway.

As a child, this blankness, was sort of how I used to see Holy Saturday.  And maybe feeling a sort of contrived, sickly guilt and shame... attempting to sustain a longer note of conjured compunction that God needed Jesus to die for me.

But for me, Holy Saturday has recently changed into one of the most powerful days of the liturgical year.

Some of the great works that have awakened Holy Saturday in my imagination, is Cynthia Bourgeault's work on the Harrowing of Hell, in her books The Wisdom Jesus and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene. What she has called "The Vigil of the Heart of the Earth" – when Jesus descended into the heart of the earth, which later became translated as 'hell'. Her above quote is from the Wisdom Jesus, and she expands this in The Meaning of Mary Magdalene in a most remarkable way, implying that Mary accompanied him in the imaginal realm. 

For some reason, whenever I read Cynthia's most cosmic, metaphysical writings, I feel much closer, even unified, with the earth, much more embodied, and more present here on this planet, ready to participate in the grounded dance of growing food and embracing my beloveds with vigor and joy. I don't know if that is her intention, but the teaching just does that for me.

I wrote this song Fear Not, Adamah, of the Earth for Advent... but if you look at it closely, it is also a direct commentary on Holy Saturday. A day which has begun to smell pungent and life-filled for me... like Mother Earth herself.

John Dominica Crossan's beautiful Easter videos have been helping to inform the way I "do Easter" this year. The new book he wrote with his wife Sarah, on the Eastern interpretation of the resurrection is a GAME CHANGER. In the Eastern tradition's iconic depictions of the Harrowing of Hell, you see Jesus holding both the hand of Eve and Adam. It is a collective (over individual) resurrection of past, present and future... because it happens in the timeless realm. To marry these images with Cynthia's gritty words of Jesus sitting as total and pure love, deepening love far beyond judgement and solutions, certainly brings some vitality back into Holy Saturday.

In this song, I used the name Adamah simply because I see us all as "of the earth" which is what the name Adam means. And the word "human", comes from the word "humus". In that light, the term "human being" really looks more like "incarnate soil". And now that we know a healthy gut microbiome looks almost identical to a microscopic photo of  of healthy humus, it brings so much to life for me, on this day, when Jesus descended to hold vigil in the heart of the earth.

Born of flesh in that stable is a sign
And he will spread his arms to embody all of life
And sink down, down in the soil
And died, died like a seed
To show love's been in every vein 
That ever flowed....

Rivers are veins. Roots are veins. We are a part of this intricate network of love here on this planet. 

Really, Holy Saturday should be another "Earth Day" for all Christians. A time to commit and reorient ourselves to the health of top soil (reversing desertification), to the health of the waters, the air and all of life. To reconsider our stance on the urgency of an economy of destruction, over the urgency of Mother Earth's very survival and placing value in the arts and beauty. It is a day to honour the earth-based wisdom of our indigenous ancestors, who held a very special intuition about "the heart of the earth". It is a time to sit with Jesus, in that heart, beyond the bonds of our egos, dying as seeds, to bear much fruit. 

I recently re-recorded the vocals for this song, to change out a couple of lyrics and sing with intentions for garden growing and participating in stepping more consciously into the great circle of life.

Listen to that particular recording right here: