Coracle news
Two Halves of Life: On Waiting
Posted Wednesday 14 December 2011
Volkov Yefim, Oktyabr, 1883
The more life asks us to wait, the more we anxiously hurry. The tempo of haste in which we live has less to do with being on time or the efficiency of a busy life - it has more to do with our being unable to wait. But waiting is unpractical time, good for nothing but mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. To Dance with God, Gertrud Mueller Nelson
Advent is upon us, a reminder of the place that waiting has in our spiritual journey.
Here is a sample of things we reflected upon when pondering the subject of Waiting, some taken from Sue Monk Kidd’s When the heart waits (pages 35 to 39)....
Waiting
There are times of waiting and times for action but perhaps says Sue Monk Kidd there is a related receptivity - letting life happen as opposed to stretching and manipulating life in order that it works for us and submit to us.
What am I waiting for?
Why wait?
Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him. Is it the prospect of joy that sustains us? The psalmist sings ‘I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits’ and exhorts himself and others to ‘Wait for the LORD, be strong and take heart, and wait for the LORD’. Paul comments that we ‘groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies’ and encourages us to wait for it patiently.
Richard Rohr in his book Everything belongs argues that everything is already given to us. The poet David Whyte concurs giving one of his poems a similar title: Everything is waiting for you. Sue Monk Kidd introduces the term ‘wu wei’ which is based on the idea that God makes available inside us all what we need to grow and so to become whole.
The stature of waiting
W H Vanstone writes memorably of the subject in his classic book The Stature of waiting…
men and women must see their dignity not only in being a point of activity in the world but also in being a point of receptivity: not only in their manifold capacity for action but also in the many facets of their passivity: not only in their potential for ‘doing’ but also in is exposure to ‘being ‘done to.
