To Wait

I woke from a dream this morning to the word, "wait."  In the dream I am in a rundown apartment.  The light is murky. This one room apartment has almost no furniture, and the paint on the walls is chipped and stained.  However, I am not alone. People are coming in and out. There is a small patio outside, and I go there and sit with others. A  young child comes to me and crawls into my lap. I ask her name, and she replies, "Priscilla." I notice her legs are covered with sores, and I am alarmed.  A woman (I have a sense this woman is not the child's mother) tells me, "Do not worry. She has an allergy."   That is when I woke with the word.  

  

Waiting is more than just resignation or idleness. Waiting is active.  In Luke 12:35 we hear the instructions, "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit."  Benediction spirituality teaches us that there are two steps to waiting: listening and obedience.  As I previously wrote, even the word obedience is rooted in listening: "obaudiens".  It is not collapsing; it is not wasting time. It is faithfully waiting for the unveiling of the next word and the revelation of the next step.  To rush waiting is to rush birth. That is generally a poor idea.       

 In the foreword to Seeking God by Esther de Waal,  Kathleen Norris wrote of our "ungodly hurry." I know all too well that hurry. It occurs when I rush ahead in a frenzy of action and worry that leads me away from both effectiveness and God.  Such hurrying results in a splintering; I am not in touch with my soul and I lose the sense of God's presence.  Certainly here in the Bay Area, this splintering frenetic hurrying is a plague.    

In the spirit of healing for us all, I  leave you with a beautiful prayer from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. He was a priest, writer, paleontologist, a thorn in the side of the Catholic church of his time, and so much more.  He was born on May 1, 1881 and died April 10, 1955.  This prayer is found in the beautiful book, Hearts on Fire, Praying with the Jesuits. Both helped get me through seminary.  

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.