Holy Waiting!

"We are not restful people who occasionally become restless. But we are restless people who occasionally become restful.” (Henri Nouwen)

Advent is the liturgical season when we pay special attention to the mystery of waiting. In our American culture, we have a real problem 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,” ; we measure time in microseconds or even nano-seconds. It’s not that we do not wait.  We may spend hours waiting in lines at airports, at doctor’s offices, on the highway in traffic, at the grocery store checks-outs – we even have to wait in the Self-Serve check-out lane or Express Lane!  Recently, I saw a clip that even bank tellers may be eliminated with some type of digital technology so no waiting would be needed. “Everyone knows that Americans hate to stand in line. It’s contrary to the basic American values of independence and self-determination. While standing in line may   not threaten life, it certainly threatens liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (T. Stawar)

I invite you to just lean back in 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. (Pause) Think of a time you waited and how you felt. Turn and tell someone where you have waited – share how you felt. How did it change you?

We wait because we have to – sometimes we have no choice but to wait. And we may wait impatiently, looking at our clocks, calendars, watches  – 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 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 sometimes bores and often irritates us however 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.

Advent is the season when we remember with gratitude creative experiences of waiting in our lives or the lives of people we have known, the people who have waited for us at one time or another.  We also remember the great waiting experiences in human history, in the Scriptures, and especially in the life Jesus. Today, we have come to reflect on faithful waiting.  Henri Nouwen writes that, “Faithful waiting is the antidote to fear and self-doubt.  It is believing God can accomplish in us something greater than our imaginings.”

Waiting teaches us to live life in increments, in small pieces rather than large chunks. Waiting teaches us to measure our progress slowly. It is hard to trust in God’s time - Kyros time – God’s  slow unfolding time.  God’s time is different from our time - Chronos time - time of clocks and calendars.  On God’s time, we are often waiting for the bigger picture but must be content with each small piece.  When we are waiting, we put one foot in front of the other every morning and evening.   Henri Nouwen says that sometimes we have enough light only for the next step.  Faithful waiting teaches us patience. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the fullest in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.  Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere.  The moment is empty.  But patient people dare to stay where they are.  Faithful waiting means nurturing the moment.

1. So as we reflect on the gift of waiting, faithful waiting, it calls us to be patient – which invites us  to trust that often times there is no quick fix.  When we have to wait without knowing the answers, without knowing what’s ahead, we are nudged into a new perspective.  Waiting without immediate solutions presents us with an opportunity to lean into the unknowing, to let go of the false promise of a quick fix, and to grow in patience.  At this time in our lives, there are many who wait for peace.  Jim Forrest, a member of Fellowship of Reconciliation, has compared the labors of peacemakers to those of the artisans who built the great medieval cathedrals, working generation after generation on projects whose completion most would never see. 

2. Patience invites us to trust in the fullness of God’s time. It is hard to wait.  We often want to take our lives into our own hands and make things happen – possibly right away! Scripture ask us to trust in the fullness of God’s time.  If we recall  Chardin’s prayer:  “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.  We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.”  It is said that there is rightness about God’s time:  ripeness, maturation, a waiting that is worth it.  (Nature is a wonderful example of God’s time – (the seasons, the ebb and flow of the oceans, the gestation period of a child in the womb).  Patience is a standing invitation to trust in God’s timing.

3. Patience opens us to what we call active waiting.  Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands.  If the bus is late.  We can’t do anything about it, so we have to sit there and just wait.  It is not difficult to understand the irritation that we feel when somebody says, “Just wait.” (Sometimes I think of the 500 people that wait in line each evening at St. Ben’s meal program in Milwaukee, WI – they just wait.  And if they cause a problem while they're waiting, then they are removed.) But in the Scriptures, there is no passivity in waiting. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively.  Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment in the conviction that something is happening where we are - and that we want to be present to it.  A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is thee moment.

4.   Patience gives us time to be available to others. Waiting presents us with opportunities to isolate ourselves and do “global whining” or to realize that we have time to be available to others.  When  we wait, we often find that we are not waiting alone.  Patience gives us time to be available and to connect us with others.  We can never experience the richness of empathy, the intimacy of shared joy and sorrow, or the solace of friendship without taking time to be available for others.  There is not a short-cut to our experiences.  Waiting gives us the chance to be open to each and every slowed-down experience.

So this week, let us ask for the grace to be open to Advent opportunities to practice holy waiting, and to grow in being restful in our restlessness!