For Christians, as those in virtually every other faith tradition, the story is the thing and the story is rehearsed over and over in a repeating, year-long drama. That’s how the story gets told. Mostly. That would be true for Holy Week in the Christian tradition, a week spanning over Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, the events that include the Last Supper with his disciples, betrayal, arrest, conviction, torture, death, and experience of enduring beyond the shakles of finitude. Death is real, but it doesn’t have the last word.

But on this day, Holy Saturday, the day inbetween crucifixion and resurrection, there is just tomb. There is no more in-between place than this. Somewhere between the human breath and breath of God is the dank tomb. It is, more than anything else, the most silent. There is nothing left to do. The future has not yet arrived. Still.

This archetypal symbol of in-betweenness is, of course, known to every creature that thought a thought, tasted sweetness, or feared what is coming next. We are poised between some-thing and no-thing. We’ve been there at the bedside. At the accident. Waiting for the call. Somewhere between finitude and infinity. Between freedom and confinement. Between the known and unknown. In the tomb.

We usually try to look away from this. But, like the accident on the side of the road we can’t not look at, it draws us in like a tractor beam. Because it is real. Because we know it. And every so often because we dare to sit and listen to what it is saying. These are whispers. The mind must quiet to hear them: The form of this world is always passing away. Everything is infinite. Both. At the same time. Tomb talk, the bubbling brook between Good Friday and Easter.

The most liminal day of the Christian calendar. For those who dare peer into the time and space that is beyond time and space.

Holy Saturday.