Today is the first Sunday in Advent and the first night of Hanukkah. Both have a time of waiting tucked into them: a holy child to be born, and consecrated oil to last eight days for the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem. Sometime during every day all of us will have a time of waiting.
Phrases posted on Facebook, December 2018
Here is a wonderful quote by Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJ: Rather than to work on the virtue of waiting, you may find it helpful simply to acknowledge what’s missing in your soul: your longing desire; your desperate need; the questions where you don’t, yet, have answers. And then pray with an awareness that God knows what you do not know.
We wait in line at the pharmacy to have our prescriptions filled, for a traffic jam to unsnarl, for an aerobic class to start, for a phone call from someone we love. These are bits of time when nothing ostensibly can happen. But what if we took those moments and used our waiting to send quiet, internal blessing thoughts to someone or something? It could become a wonderful love-habit.
In the usual way we use the word, wait, we are passively waiting for something from the outside to change or resolve. When we use the word wait as in waiting on someone, we are actively placing ourselves in a position to be of service. Could we ask our spiritual core how we might wait on it in the days ahead?
Waiting, of course, has anticipation in it. We range in our anticipation from expecting the worst, the best, or the same old, same old. A Zen teacher of mine would say, only go don’t know. Checking in on the prevalent mood of our waiting can be really helpful, for then we can know that we do not know (as irritating to our egos as that may be). It will set us free from prediction and give us a chance to receive the gifts and surprises of what is at hand.
On the same thought as last time, I find it curious that in waiting we can feel intense dread. The other shoe will drop! We just know it, OR we can be convinced that all shall be well somehow, sometime. What if waiting was thought of as an embrace instead of a teetering from one pole to the other? We could allow it to be a sacred pause of whatever duration in which our vulnerable humanity could just be tenderly held.
Here is a wonderful quote about waiting from Brother Jim Woodrum, SSJ:
Everything in creation requires a time of gestation: canyons took millions of years to be formed by rivers of water; the oldest known Sequoia tree is said to have taken 3,266 years to grow; babies are not ready to be delivered at conception. I would say that it is a part of God’s order to wait.
Waiting can become a beautiful exhalation: a gestating, nothing-to-do-time. When we learn to relax our thoughts and our bodies we will experience that we have gained time instead of feeling that our time has been wasted. Something
new will have a chance to grow.
Someone asks, how are you? Someone answers, Busy, busy, busy! (as if it were a badge of honor). And now in the Holiday Season busy, busy, busy is almost a mantra. In the midst of “all of that” could we sense that a part of us is waiting for us to stop being busy, busy, busy, and to show up for an inner reunion?
Here is a quote by Martha Postlewaite. It is called Clearing. Do not try to save the whole world and do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is your life falls into your own, cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.
Wait, Wait, Don’t tell me! is a popular program on the radio, and for me it is great instruction. For parents, why not let your child tie his shoelaces even if it isn’t perfectly done and takes a long time? For friends, please wait and don’t finish their dangling sentences. It’s theirs to say whatever and however they can. I sometimes think that hurrying others because I don’t have the courtesy to wait is a subtle kind of stealing.
In Sweden, where I grew up, we celebrated Christmas Eve as the big event of the Holidays. Today is Christmas Eve Day. No more waiting. It’s here! What if we could feel every day as the day? No more waiting.
Could it be that whatever is unlived in us, and is still ours to be about, is waiting for us? Patiently in the shadows of daily lives it waits hoping we will turn our attention and caring towards it. Perhaps this a question to keep in our heart pockets: “What waits for me and asks for a chance to complete me?”
For many householders there are constant things “waiting” to be repaired or taken care of. We stop a moment, and it may feel like the waiting jobs show up as if they had a right to every speck of free time we have. Then, to wait a moment and allow our choice of what we will do and what we will not do, is time well spent. Perhaps it can become a habit in the year ahead.
On the cusp of 2019 we may feel hopeful or discouraged. The New Year is waiting for us. No sense making any resolutions if we will soon break them. What then? Perhaps it is not to fix anything, but to be present and give shelter to our deepest longings and so make the next twelve months a truly new year.
