Tuesday, November 27, 2012

“Wait, Wait! Do Tell!”


I thought I’d share Part I of my reflections on Advent which we will celebrate this coming weekend.  It is the New Year in the Church calendar.  I share these thoughts because I continue to hear about buy- buy – buy!  I’m already psychically exhausted!  – And we have just survived, Gray Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday!  We also continue to hear about the “Fiscal Cliff” – which “is the popular shorthand term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect.” Doesn’t life already have enough conundrums and cliffs?  What if during these four weeks of Advent,  we consider a spiritual edge?  How about challenging ourselves to minimize shopping time and “go to the edge” by finding some time of quieting and allowing ourselves at least 15-20 minutes everyday to breathe, read something spiritually uplifting, and reflect on our lives and how God can find a “home” deep within us.  
  • Our consumer culture tells us that buying and having more things will make us happy. Spirituality says true contentment comes from within. 
  • Family, friends, and work colleagues tell us that we should be doing more, that being busy busy busy and pushing pushing pushing is what it takes to get ahead and get along in our world. Spirituality says we already have what we seek; we are endowed with an innate worthiness.
  • Popular culture tells us that loners are losers and being alone causes loneliness. Spirituality says that solitude brings us face-to-face with who we really are and leads to transformation. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Advent
By Lucy Rose Johns
We are waiting for these aches and pains to be healed. 
We are waiting for the hunger within to be satisfied.
We are waiting for love to touch us. 
We are waiting to be understood and really listened to.
We are waiting for decisions to be easy. 
We are waiting to be inspired to love unlovable people.
We are waiting for financial cares to be resolved.
We are waiting for serenity to accept the things we cannot change.
We are waiting for courage to change the things we can.
We are waiting for wisdom to know the difference.
We are waiting to be appreciated.
We are waiting for justice. 
We are waiting for the answers.
We are waiting for the dawn of a new day. 
We are waiting for things to get easier.
We are waiting for a time of rest, peace, quiet.
We are waiting for patience. 
We are waiting and waiting. We are waiting  - 
In joyful hope for the coming of the Lord!

More Reflections
We are not restful people who occasionally become restless.  But we are restless people who occasionally become restful.”  Henry Nouwen:

Advent is the liturgical season when we pay special attention to the mystery of waiting.  In our culture we have a real problem here because most of us Americans don’t like waiting, and we certainly don’t see waiting as something to celebrate. We live in a culture that cooks its food in microwaves, or we can choose the “drive thru,” and we measure time in microseconds or even nano-seconds.  (And I’m sure that you could tell me more examples of waiting.)

It’s not that we do not wait.  We may spend hours waiting in lines at airports, at doctor’s offices, on the highway, at the grocery store – I invite you to just lean back into your memory of your everyday experiences and recall where you wait:  for your medicine, or for it to take effect, for your meals, for a phone call, a visit, or a letter.  Or you wait for the result of your tests, or for healing. Think of a time you waited and how you felt. Turn and tell someone where you have waited – share how you felt.
We wait because we have to – sometimes we have no choice but to wait.   And we may wait impatiently, looking at our watches, or cell phones – or maybe we even find ourselves complaining – if not verbally, then we may hold it in and do some  “internal global whining.” 
Our culture tends to view waiting as an inconvenient necessity or as an outright injustice that stems from a variety of factors, for example:
  • We see time as a resource to be controlled and allocated for our own personal gain and convenience.
  • We allow time to run our lives, hurrying to and from scheduled appointments and on to the next appointment.
  • We see waiting as a certain sign that something is wrong and that should have been fixed but was not.
  • Our entertainment, from television, to radio talk shows, to movies has created an illusion that all problems are resolvable in something less than two hours or even less than that.
  • Our culture tends to prize action more than meditation, speed rather than slow progress and arriving rather than the journey.
So in our culture, waiting bores and often irritates us and we may find that at every stage of our lives some new forms of waiting are involved.  However the Scriptures teach us that if we approach waiting in the right spirit, waiting is a creative moment when we grow spiritually.  When we wait, we are in touch with an essential aspect of our humanity which is that we are dependent on God and on one another.  It is also an act of love since, by waiting for others; we pay them the respect of letting them be free.

Waiting is a mystery – God waits and nature waits – so that when we as 
individuals wait we go beyond ourselves and enter into sacred life-giving 
process, experiencing that we are made in the image and likeness of God.   
This is why Advent is a time of celebration.

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