musings on silence

or sleeping first to be awakened

Holy Saturdays of childhood were filled with dying of hard-boiled eggs for our Easter baskets, helping prepare food for an Easter feast, and washing our hair to put into rag curls in the evening. We’d bring a basket of household staples for a blessing after Tenebrae. We’d shush each other because Jesus was in the tomb. We’d talk about best hiding spots for our baskets (definitely inside the grandfather clock). We’d think about silence.

And in early marriage, Holy Saturdays looked like a day of flurry—many small children’s outfits to gather up and iron, last-minute menu details to hash out, finding creative ways to keep said small children content while doing the Big Extended Family Holiday juggle. We had forgotten about silence.

And now in middle marriage (is that what this is? 15 years this May!) with gradeschoolish children, it’s a day where boys are serving at church, Anthony is chanting, the girls helping with churchy things, and I’m keeping the three-year-old occupied at home. I soak in interior silence.

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I wrote on silence and being awakened by Christ for Evangelization and Culture Online, Word on Fire’s online journal. I hope you like it—>take a read. I know I’ve spilled a lot of ink and digital space on the work of silence done to me last year on my long retreat, so bear with me while I unironically talk about silence again. I link a silence posture to a sleeping one.

To be awakened, let us first be sleepers.

But what does it mean to be a sleeper? If this Holy Saturday is to be set apart—perhaps the first Holy Saturday in all your years that you are going to allow God to move your heart to rest—what would that look like? Can you allow the Divine Physician, he who came to heal after being wounded, to slow the beat of your own heart to match his?

It’s vulnerable to be silent. Our superfluous words, busy thoughts, filling-the-time actions give us a semblance of protection, of cover. Like I’m busy so please go check on someone else. To be restful or to be asleep means we can be attacked! To be still means we look lazy or unproductive. All of these churning, buzzing lies about what it is to be meaningful, loveable, interesting. Hmmmmmm.

I’m inviting you to interior silence this Holy Saturday. Whether your loneliness is at an all-time high, your children at an all-time volume, your body’s aches and pains beyond the all-time record. Whether you’re inside the tomb or wailing outside. Whether you’re where you want to be or nowhere near it. Ask for silence on the inside and you’ll receive it. And your heart will be that much more prepared for the awakening that is to come.

Love and prayers,

Nell

ps. My second video with Ascension Presents is out! It’s on a toxic trait I’m trying to give up and what’s at the root of it. Enjoy!

pps. I loved this priest’s homily for Holy Thursday. Starts around 29 mins. Watch here.

ppps. Did you catch

Haley Stewart

‘s commentary on tradwifery? Yes, yes, and more yes.