This is holy Saturday. It would be easier (at first) to avoid the pain of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and move on quickly to the celebration of Easter Sunday. But one thing I know, as a chaplain and a griever, is that we cannot avoid difficult feelings or skip the grief. Today, we remember that the disciples put their friend in the ground after watching him die an awful death. We remember that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary vigil with Jesus through the unfolding trauma

There’s nothing like an emergency room or a critical care unit in a hospital to give a person a kind of perspective, a window into suffering and pain, on all different levels. In the depths. Overwhelmed by the chaotic waters. It’s real. It hits home. This is where some people are regularly at, more often than any of us would like to admit. When we read Psalm 130, we aren’t sure whether it’s the depths of sorrow or grief, or the depths of emotional frustration or psychological