Holy Saturday

these photos, paired with this reflection...

The Rose

Casida of the Rose

The rose

was not searching for the sunrise:

almost eternal on its branch,

it was searching for something else.

The rose

was not searching for darkness or science:

borderline of flesh and dream,

it was searching for something else.

The rose

was not searching for the rose.

Motionless in the sky

it was searching for something else.

-Federico Garcia Lorca

translated by Robert Bly

Father Bede Griffiths, Surrendering to the Feminine

If the video isn't working (I'm still figuring out this process of embedding videos) you can watch it here.

“...What my experience taught me was that when everything thing else goes, you discover this love, which is in you all the time, it’s there deep down and you know nothing about it. But let everything go and it comes. And I got a tremendous insight into Jesus on the Cross from this. It was very interesting. And at the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” you see, that was a climax for him. And I think at that moment he had lost everything. His disciples had fled, the jurors were all against him, the people rejected him, and now he had to let go of his God. Do you see? “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” And the moment he let go of God and faced death, darkness, nothingness, he was taken to total Love you see. That is the experience of death. Behind all death is this tremendous power of Love. ..."
Father Bede Griffiths

Fasting

I'm thinking of fasting today, of sitting with my desire, of giving it space to move through me, to wash me out and to undo me.

I'm thinking of what it means to live and love with a broken heart, raw, wide open, and exposed. I'm thinking about what it might mean to be, as I am, in the world, unattached to the labels I have been given, to the deep shame of being told how I've been broken.

into fragments.

that can't be pieced back together again.

I'm wondering what it would mean to unravel these broken pieces while standing strong, breath steady and deep.

Fasting: the practice of peeling back those layers built to divide and to hold apart, to protect us from being human.

I pray to be broken open.
...Over and over and over again.