Waiting
Today at the yoga studio someone asked me what I did besides this. A moment or two of blank staring later, I replied with considerable stammering: "Uh, besides yoga? Besides working here? I, uh, well, I just graduated. I have my Masters. Just, kinda, doing this for now. You know."
*Inner mental face palm*
"Oh, wow! What'd you study?"
"Divinity. I have a Masters of Divinity. Um, it's a theology degree."
"You can study divinity?? I imagine it's kinda hard to make that lucrative, unless you want to be a holy person?"
"...right. Yeah. Basically...or like work in a church."
At this point I give myself a mental high five for being the dumbest MDiv ever to graduate and have this conversation. It occurs to me I could have said something about being an admin in the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer, but my mouth was still slightly agape at the holy person suggestion, and I haven't started the aforementioned job yet and would maybe look crazier mentioning a job I do not yet perform.
As the yogi leaves the studio, I return to the monotony of folding towels, my introverted way of surviving an extroverted job when conversations are just too hard.
What am I doing?
Waiting.
I guess I'm waiting.
What do I do besides my part-time job? Wait for my other part-time job to start. What will I do then? Wait for Taylor to graduate so I can get a full-time job. I don't know. Maybe this is how everyone is when they exit academia for the first time, just waiting and surveying the landscape without all the immediate to-dos of education. But to me waiting seems like stalling, which makes your metaphorical life-car slide backwards down the hill.
Wendell Berry says waiting is when we recognize the fulfillment of our deepest humanity. He says the spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present in the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. And this is at the very core of being human in God's world.
But there are a few things that make waiting absolutely one of the hardest things about life. First, waiting is impossible when you are afraid. And being afraid is nearly universal right now in our world. "Fearful people have a hard time waiting," says Wendell, "because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are. The more afraid we are, the harder waiting becomes." I've always heard the most common phrase from God to humans in the Bible is, "Don't be afraid," and even though I never counted myself, I believe it. God has to tell us over and over again not to fear, because we live in a world where there are gunmen (who are also afraid), disasters, war, danger, Zika -- you name it, we've got it.
But you know, all those times when God or angels say, "Don't be afraid," they always bring good news. It's almost like they know Mary and Zechariah and Simeon and all the people at the beginning of Luke need an actual reason not to be afraid, just like we do, and that reason is the promise "good things are about to happen to you." The promise that something is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. "We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more."
In order to be able to wait, we must know that what we are waiting for is growing from the ground on which we stand. And to be present to that - without fear that leads to running, without impatience that tells us the real thing is happening somewhere else, without preconceptions about what it will look like - being present in the moment of growth is called waiting.
Waiting sounds an awful lot like hoping. Used in this way, they are the same. If hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled according to a promise, the tricky thing about hoping (waiting) is that you could easily confuse it with wishing. But wishing is too close-minded. Hope is open-ended. Who knows exactly what God has for us? The minute we put a mental image to a hope, we substitute the real thing for a fantasy. "Let it be to me according to your word," says Mary, even though that word is absolutely unimaginable.
Anyone can wish for something concrete, but being caught up in the image of "I wish I had that job, or more money in the bank, or no more migraines," although concrete, keeps us in the flurry of striving toward a goal, taking the necessary steps to make it happen ourselves, and that's not hope. That's not real waiting. God wants to do something in us that is far greater than all we ask or imagine.
Do I have goals? Yes! I want to be a medical ethicist. I want to get a fellowship in 2017. I want to own a home by the time I'm 30. But I have measured steps to get there, and that's not the same as waiting. I am waiting for the promise, which is that the big arc of my story bends toward reunion with God, and regardless of my circumstances my soul is finding its way home. In a world like ours, I'm not sure how we are supposed to wait for that except through the help of the community, the Church, which gathers and affirms that yes, something is happening that is worth waiting for! This is why I believe in the Church even still: it is a space in which we wait for what we have already seen, taking it seriously when it reappears in each others' lives, letting the flame of current and past hope give us the courage to go forth again. This is why I believe in prayer, which holds God to his promise, and in the Eucharist, which says, "remember when we saw the Kingdom among us, where everyone had a place at the table? That is the true state of affairs."
And finally, we learn to wait through the person of Jesus, in whose passion we see God not acting but waiting for our response. The Christian God is one who waits on humanity, not seeking control, not only acting as an omnipotent force compelling us to react, but receiving the torturous actions of people. It is in the compassionate, hopeful waiting of Christ that love in its fullness is revealed. In him we see that not being in control is part of the human condition. Jesus' vocation was fulfilled not just in action, but also in passion, in waiting.
As heirs to the promise, the same one proclaimed to Mary and Elizabeth and Anna before us, we stand on ground holy enough that something is growing in it. I know for sure something is growing while I wait, not passively wishing or frantically striving, but actively watching. God is moving in our world, even though it doesn't look like it, and God is moving underneath my soil too.
(All quotations taken from Wendell Berry's essay "A Spirituality of Waiting" in the Weavings Reader, ed. John S. Mogabgab)
*Inner mental face palm*
"Oh, wow! What'd you study?"
"Divinity. I have a Masters of Divinity. Um, it's a theology degree."
"You can study divinity?? I imagine it's kinda hard to make that lucrative, unless you want to be a holy person?"
"...right. Yeah. Basically...or like work in a church."
At this point I give myself a mental high five for being the dumbest MDiv ever to graduate and have this conversation. It occurs to me I could have said something about being an admin in the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer, but my mouth was still slightly agape at the holy person suggestion, and I haven't started the aforementioned job yet and would maybe look crazier mentioning a job I do not yet perform.
As the yogi leaves the studio, I return to the monotony of folding towels, my introverted way of surviving an extroverted job when conversations are just too hard.
What am I doing?
Waiting.
I guess I'm waiting.
What do I do besides my part-time job? Wait for my other part-time job to start. What will I do then? Wait for Taylor to graduate so I can get a full-time job. I don't know. Maybe this is how everyone is when they exit academia for the first time, just waiting and surveying the landscape without all the immediate to-dos of education. But to me waiting seems like stalling, which makes your metaphorical life-car slide backwards down the hill.
Wendell Berry says waiting is when we recognize the fulfillment of our deepest humanity. He says the spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present in the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. And this is at the very core of being human in God's world.
But there are a few things that make waiting absolutely one of the hardest things about life. First, waiting is impossible when you are afraid. And being afraid is nearly universal right now in our world. "Fearful people have a hard time waiting," says Wendell, "because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are. The more afraid we are, the harder waiting becomes." I've always heard the most common phrase from God to humans in the Bible is, "Don't be afraid," and even though I never counted myself, I believe it. God has to tell us over and over again not to fear, because we live in a world where there are gunmen (who are also afraid), disasters, war, danger, Zika -- you name it, we've got it.
But you know, all those times when God or angels say, "Don't be afraid," they always bring good news. It's almost like they know Mary and Zechariah and Simeon and all the people at the beginning of Luke need an actual reason not to be afraid, just like we do, and that reason is the promise "good things are about to happen to you." The promise that something is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. "We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more."
In order to be able to wait, we must know that what we are waiting for is growing from the ground on which we stand. And to be present to that - without fear that leads to running, without impatience that tells us the real thing is happening somewhere else, without preconceptions about what it will look like - being present in the moment of growth is called waiting.
Waiting sounds an awful lot like hoping. Used in this way, they are the same. If hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled according to a promise, the tricky thing about hoping (waiting) is that you could easily confuse it with wishing. But wishing is too close-minded. Hope is open-ended. Who knows exactly what God has for us? The minute we put a mental image to a hope, we substitute the real thing for a fantasy. "Let it be to me according to your word," says Mary, even though that word is absolutely unimaginable.
Anyone can wish for something concrete, but being caught up in the image of "I wish I had that job, or more money in the bank, or no more migraines," although concrete, keeps us in the flurry of striving toward a goal, taking the necessary steps to make it happen ourselves, and that's not hope. That's not real waiting. God wants to do something in us that is far greater than all we ask or imagine.
Do I have goals? Yes! I want to be a medical ethicist. I want to get a fellowship in 2017. I want to own a home by the time I'm 30. But I have measured steps to get there, and that's not the same as waiting. I am waiting for the promise, which is that the big arc of my story bends toward reunion with God, and regardless of my circumstances my soul is finding its way home. In a world like ours, I'm not sure how we are supposed to wait for that except through the help of the community, the Church, which gathers and affirms that yes, something is happening that is worth waiting for! This is why I believe in the Church even still: it is a space in which we wait for what we have already seen, taking it seriously when it reappears in each others' lives, letting the flame of current and past hope give us the courage to go forth again. This is why I believe in prayer, which holds God to his promise, and in the Eucharist, which says, "remember when we saw the Kingdom among us, where everyone had a place at the table? That is the true state of affairs."
And finally, we learn to wait through the person of Jesus, in whose passion we see God not acting but waiting for our response. The Christian God is one who waits on humanity, not seeking control, not only acting as an omnipotent force compelling us to react, but receiving the torturous actions of people. It is in the compassionate, hopeful waiting of Christ that love in its fullness is revealed. In him we see that not being in control is part of the human condition. Jesus' vocation was fulfilled not just in action, but also in passion, in waiting.
As heirs to the promise, the same one proclaimed to Mary and Elizabeth and Anna before us, we stand on ground holy enough that something is growing in it. I know for sure something is growing while I wait, not passively wishing or frantically striving, but actively watching. God is moving in our world, even though it doesn't look like it, and God is moving underneath my soil too.
(All quotations taken from Wendell Berry's essay "A Spirituality of Waiting" in the Weavings Reader, ed. John S. Mogabgab)
"Jesus' vocation was fulfilled not just in action, but also in passion, in waiting."
ReplyDeleteJordan. Number one, you're a fantastic writer. Number two, this season is enabling you to suck all of the wisdom out of marrow of the beast called waiting. And number three, I'm thankful as hell that you share it.
You're a conduit directing beautiful revelations and breathing needed words of God into the world. Thank you. OK BYE.