Shape and Substance No. 20
by Paul Hooker
20 April 2025
t’s Holy Saturday, the Day Between, the day after the worst has happened and the day before it is possible to expect the best. It is a day we Prostestants don’t know what to do with, and so we mostly ignore it.
That’s a mistake, I think. There is much this day of darkness and hopelessness, of loss and dead ends would teach us—about the limits on human pride and arrogance, the failure of human self-aggrandizement, and the fact that hopelessness may well be the purest form of hope.
Here is a poem, written a few years ago, that I used in my Paschal Vigil collection, The Hole in the Heart of God (Resource Publications, 2020). It is my humble suggestion that death may well have something to teach us who cling so fiercely to life.
The Second Day
Do not yet roll the stone away
nor hurry toward tomorrow’s dawn;
let us dwell in death today.
Other voices have their say
outside this sabbatic tomb.
Do not yet roll the stone away
nor come to gloat, embalm, or pray,
lament, or raise the victor’s song—
no, let us dwell in death today.
Build no castles made of clay,
draw up no plans for sacred rooms.
Do not yet roll the stone away
and prematurely birth the day
when knowledge preens and error looms.
Let us dwell in death today:
the Possible in its unknown way
will use the dark to make us strong.
Do not yet roll the stone away,
but let us dwell in death today.
Shape and Substance 
Paul, as always, and with stunning eloquence, you capture the liminality of that day when no one knew what to expect or where to turn. “Be still, and know that I am God” comes to mind, as does “Do not be afraid.” What is there to fear when all is lost (or so it surely seemed on that Second Day.) Thank you for the remembrance of the day between.
LikeLike