In the in-between

Dwelling in the liminal space of Holy Saturday

Apr 18, 2025

caterpillar, cocoon, and butterfly — Artwork by Iconic Quilling

On Saturday (April 19) I will lead my faith community in a sacred Holy Saturday service honoring Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This is a piece of what I will be sharing with them.

In the Christian tradition, the religious tradition I most identify with, Holy Saturday is the liminal space between Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s a waiting place of uncertainty.

It’s a place of tension that we often rush through in search of new life. We want to arrive at the triumph of the resurrection on Easter morning.

But the story of resurrection as life conquering death does not speak to the realities of traumatic suffering.

The middle place between life and death is one that survivors of sexual violence know well. Something has died. Life as they knew it is gone. What remains is unclear. The future is uncertain.

My story

In 1992, on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, a man sexually assaulted me after a run in Paris. At the time, I’d been working as a nanny for a French family in Paris for two months.

The morning I was assaulted, part of me died. I didn’t know who I would be in the “after.” How others would look at me. Who they would see.

I couldn’t see the path ahead of me.

The assault led me to embark on a spiritual journey that I otherwise might not have. It eventually led me to seminary, where I earned a Master of Theological Studies in 2019. My master’s thesis explored spiritual care for female survivors of sexual violence. In my seminary studies and the writing of my thesis, I discovered new embodied and life-giving theologies that helped me make sense of what I’d been through.

A life-giving theology

Shelly Rambo, a professor at Boston University School of Theology, writes about the middle space of Holy Saturday in her book Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining. Much of my thinking here comes from her work.

The book is academic and dense, and I won’t bog you down with the details or attempt to explain the intricacies of Rambo’s theology. Instead, let me offer a broad overview. An incomplete summary that gets to the heart of what I want to share.

Rambo offers an understanding of Spirit that she calls the “Middle Spirit.” The Middle Spirit dwells between life and death. It remains and persists when death is not completed or in the past and life is not new or directed toward the future. It witnesses to trauma and provides the “capacity to imagine beyond an ending.”

Rambo describes the middle place as an imaginative, creative space between life and death where Spirit dwells.

I picture it like the caterpillar in the cocoon that has disintegrated into goo—organized groups of cells that scientists call imaginal discs. It is no longer a caterpillar, but not yet a butterfly. The Middle Spirit is present in the goo, as a witness to what remains of death and the process of sensing life again.

That evening a man named Joseph came. He was a rich man from Arimathea who had become a disciple of Jesus. He came to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate gave him permission to take it. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had carved out of the rock. After he rolled a large stone at the door of the tomb, he went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting in front of the tomb. Matthew 27:57-61 (CEB)

In this Holy Saturday passage, the “other Mary” and Mary Magdalene sit near the tomb where Jesus’ body has been placed, waiting and uncertain. They have witnessed Jesus’ death, and now they refuse to abandon him. They continue to witness the unfolding of this story. Their presence at the tomb as witnesses to the liminal space between death and life reflects their love for Jesus.

Divine Love survives in the middle space of Holy Saturday.

The questions that arose for me in the aftermath of trauma were not unusual.

Why me? Why did this happen? Where was God? Why would God let this happen?

There were times when I felt abandoned by God.

It took me years to realize that Divine Love had been with me in the midst of my Holy Saturday.

Divine Love showed up through the people who gathered around me in the aftermath. Like Mary Magdalene, they were witnesses to my experience. They did not abandon me.

When I told the woman I worked for what had happened, she insisted that I call a friend. She refused to let me retreat to my room and spend the rest of the day alone.
The friend knocked on my door less than an hour after I called her. She held me as I sobbed and stood by me as I dialed a rape crisis line. She spent the rest of the day with me.
Another friend prayed with me the day after the assault. In the weeks and months that followed, we sat in Paris cafés for hours to explore my questions about God.

These witnesses showed up. They listened. They helped me to live in the liminal space and to move forward.

hands encircle a teal ribbon, for sexual assault survivor awareness month

Here, I must pause to acknowledge that survivors’ responses to the religious and spiritual struggles they experience in the aftermath of trauma vary. Some turn toward spirituality or religion for support. Others turn away from it. Neither response is “right” or “wrong.” We each have to find our own way.

In the immediate aftermath, I chose to tell others what had happened. I recognize that not all survivors make the same choice, whether it’s out of fear, shame, self-blame, or for some other reason. My prayer for these survivors is that someday they find one person with whom they can share their story, whether it’s a friend, a family member, a therapist, or a spiritual director, because I believe in the healing power that comes from sharing our stories.

We all experience Holy Saturday at one time or another in our lives.

A death occurs—maybe it’s a literal death, maybe it’s the death of a dream, or a traumatic event. We have to find our way to living on. We have to discover what remains.

COVID was a collective Holy Saturday for us. I believe that the time we are living in now is another collective Holy Saturday.

May we be like Mary Magdalene and serve as witnesses to one another in the in-between times of Holy Saturday, in the space between death and life. May we listen to, care for, hold onto and remain with all those who dwell in the in-between times.

How has the Middle Spirit shown up for you in your Holy Saturday times? In the liminal space between death and life, who have been the witnesses to your experience?