Today is, officially, Holy Saturday – the empty space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It might better be called Holey Saturday. It is a hole, a hiatus, an abyss between the two strongest days of the Christian calendar. 

           Unlike Christmas – which has very little biblical evidence to support a date of December 25 – the date of Jesus’ crucifixion can be quite precisely identified. It happened at the Jewish Passover, which came about according to a 1000-year-old formula based on the spring equinox and the full moon.

            The crucifixion is also one of the few facts in the Bible that cannot be challenged. Every gospel, every letter, agrees that Jesus was crucified. No other world religion claims a leader who was executed as a criminal. 

            And the traditions agree that on the “third day” – counting Friday as Day One, because the counters didn’t have zero, yet – on Sunday morning, he was no longer in his tomb. 

           But Saturday is the day between. When nothing happens. 

            Because nothing could happen. Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath. The laws of Moses made it a day of rest. Jews were commanded to emulate God, who – according to Genesis – created the universe in six days, then rested on the seventh day. That’s why the women had to wait until Sunday morning to come to the tomb, 

By the end of this year, all B.C. schools will have to provide free menstrual tampons and pads for students.

            The announcement begins to end a prejudice that seems to have been around as long as civilization. The Bible, an authority for three world religions, considers menstruating women unclean. They must be segregated. Anita Diamant built that exclusion into her best-selling book, The Red Tent.

            Half of human population have, or have had, menstrual periods. Yet it remains a taboo subject.

            Although most schools do make pads and tampons available for emergencies, “many young women feel awkward asking for menstrual products at a school office,” said Rebecca Ballard, a Grade 11 student in the New Westminster school district. 

            And if that’s the situation in Canada, imagine what it must be like in more traditional countries like Uganda.

            Erika van Oyen went to Uganda in 2008 as a volunteer. She quickly realized that many girls got short-changed on their education. Unable to afford disposable sanitary supplies – indeed, often unable even to afford underpants – they missed a week of schooling every month.

            “Before we started this program,” van Oyen says, “schools taught about women’s biology, about menstrual cycles. But a girl in her period is ridiculed. Teased if she soils her clothes. Humiliated. So they stay away. They fall behind in their classes, and eventually they drop out.”

The first thing budding writers learn is to “avoid clichés like the plague.” Unfortunately clichés sometimes describe the current political situation better than a host of well honed words.

            In Ottawa, Justin Trudeau has spent weeks stuck on the horns of dilemma.

            On the one horn, he represents a Montreal riding. He has a right -- even a duty -- to lobby for his constituents, many of whom work for SNC-Lavalin. He also needs SNC-Lavalin’s services for his $187 billion infrastructure renewal program.

            On the other horn, he should not pressure Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to interfere in a criminal case.

 I feel that someone from New Zealand needs to respond and let you and your readers know that what you propose as a new way of thinking is exactly what is happening here.

            On 15 March, the day of the shootings in two Christchurch mosques, but before anyone knew how many had been killed and injured, our Prime Minister, 38-year-old Jacinda Ardern, told the nation "We are one. They are us." That theme has been echoed in the ten days that have followed, by all who have the opportunity to speak publicly -- other politicians, journalists, church and civic leaders. Thousands of people throughout New Zealand have attended prayer vigils and special services, alongside our Muslim brothers and sisters. Human chains have been formed around mosques to symbolize standing together to protect each other. Non-Muslim women, including the Prime Minister, have worn the hijab in solidarity.

Hate strikes again! In New Zealand/Aotearoa of all places. The whole country has less than ten gun-related murders a year; only 35 murders in the whole of 2018. 

            Then in a single afternoon, 50 people dead. Another 40 or so injured, some requiring amputations to save their lives. And hundreds who will suffer post-traumatic stress for months. 

            Just because they were Muslims, worshipping at two mosques in the city of Christchurch. 

            As I write these sentences, one suspect has been arrested – 26-year-old Brenton Tarrant. 

            In a 74-page manifesto, Tarrant declared himself to be a right-wing white supremacist. I’m almost grateful to him for being honest. I’ve long argued that the primary threat to peace does not come from left-wing radicals, but from the far right. Even the FBI, long obsessed with Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist paranoia, now admits that fact.