...wait

Silently now I wait for Thee,

Ready, my God, Thy will to see;

Open my heart, illumine me, Spirit divine!

--Clara H. Scott, 1895

Wait.                                    Wait.                                    Wait.                                    How hard is that for you? For me, and for most of us, waiting is nigh to impossible. While waiting for no discernible reason is infuriating, we are not even very good at waiting for reasons we comprehend and support. Good things may come to those who wait, but instant gratification comes to those who grab.

But our impatience is not just annoying to those around us (mothers and teachers, can I get an ‘Amen’?). It can also cheat us of the reward of hearing --- really hearing ---what someone has to say. Wait to see what God has to say; it may not be spoken on your time, but on God’s. Sit with  silence; sit in expectation. Don’t miss the message because of your impatience.

Wait.                                    Wait.                                    Wait.

...the world in pieces

Christians all, your Lord is coming, hope for peace is now at hand.

Let there be no hesitation, walk in faith where life demands.

Bear the word that God has given; share the birth that stirs your soul.

Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ will come and make you whole.

---Jim Miller, 1993

“What do you want from me?!” This question, borne of frustration, whispered in fury or shouted in rage. This question, from a student in over his head and floundering in an advanced academic class. This question, from an uncommunicative spouse during a couples counseling session crackling with tension. This question, from a sleep-deprived, wound-tight new mother, desperate to know why the tiny baby she loves refuses to be comforted.

And we, too. We who claim Christ. We who pray for a world at peace and, instead, survey a world in pieces. We who stand helpless, empty hands curling uselessly into fists as we are tempted, ourselves, to go to pieces. We stand, fists curled, feeling helpless, and clueless, and cry into the broken world, “What do you want from me?!”

And from the silence…answers. Walk in faith, don’t hesitate. Carry with you the word God gave you. Share the nativity story that still lights you up. Can you do these things? They are part of your breathe-in-breathe-out, after all, your being. The world wants you…to be fully you.

And Christ will come, and in the coming, the world in pieces will find peace.

...wait

Silently now I wait for thee,

Ready, my God, thy will to see;

Open my heart, illumine me, Spirit divine!

---Clara H. Scott, 1895

Wait.                                    Wait.                                    Wait.                                    How hard is that for you? For me, and for most of us, waiting is nigh to impossible. While waiting for no discernible reason is infuriating, we are not even very good at waiting for reasons we comprehend and support.

But our impatience is not just annoying to those around us. It can cheat us of the reward of hearing --- really hearing ---what someone has to say. Wait to see what God has to say; it may not be spoken on your time, but on God’s. Be silent; be expectant. Don’t miss the message because of your impatience.

Wait.                                    Wait.                                    Wait.

...hush

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.
---Liturgy of St. James, 5th cent.

Hush.

I'm afraid I often miss it. As a sometime musician, and a sometime wordsmith, I am a two-time loser in the silence department. Keep silence? I would sooner walk on my hands all day (and that, friends, is not happening). Most of the time, I see silence as a vacuum to be filled, an invitation to respond to, a note passed in fifth grade with a place to check 'yes' or 'no'. 

And even in, or especially in, worship, my response to perceiving the presence of God---vast as universe, close as breath---is sound and motion. Say something, do something---THERE IS GOD!
Like the Psalmist, I want to sing a new song---a loud one, a better one, a prettier one---to the Lord. Like David, I want to rip off my cloak and lose myself in a dance of such abandon that my soul will finally be revealed...<sigh>...to the one who created my soul and inhabits it still. Like Peter, I want to spring into action, gathering up sticks and building the hut to end all huts, so that, forevermore, #wecanallhangoutandthisfeelingwillneverchangebecauseJesusyouarethesparkliest.

When sometimes, the perfection, the completeness, the wholeness of worship might be bound up in silence. In stillness. In breatheinbreatheout. In wait. 

But. That's not my spiritual gift.

Hush.

...in this darkness

In this darkness
I do not ask to walk by light;
but to feel the touch of your hand
and understand that sight is not seeing.

In this silence
I do not ask to hear your voice;
but to sense your Spirit breathe
and so bequeath my care to your keeping.

In unknowing 
I do not ask for fearless space;
but for grace to comprehend
that neither you nor I are diminished.

In this ending
I do not ask to forfeit pain,
but to gain the strength to love through loss,
and cross the bridge of waiting.
---Pat Bennett, 2001 (para John Bell, laca)

When darkness, and silence, and unknowing fall like black-out curtains on a life, it is tough to assume that the things we no longer see, or hear, or know are still there. Perhaps because we are by nature empirical, we are quick to be drawn in by what we sense and experience; we even have pithy sayings and mottos around experience ('seeing is believing' and 'Missouri --- the ShowMe State').

And because of that dependence on what is seen/heard/felt, the absence of experience leaves us at sea, wondering whether we might not have been abandoned to our own devices by a God who has bigger concerns or more interesting company.

And sometimes God may come to us, breaking through the darkness and silence and cloud of unknowing with certain vision and clear voice and absolute certainty. But the times when God is not revealed in this way does not diminish God, or you. You are not less for not having an experiential revelation. Your God is not less for 'failing' to provide the perfect double rainbow and angel song just in time.

Because God is a pilgrim God, as we are a pilgrim people. And in the dark, and in the silence, and even in the unknowing, there is One beside us to hold us up, to breathe with us, to remind us that we are. And in the endings, that One is there, too, guiding us through pain, willing us in time to be strong enough to risk loving, when light returns.

...here I linger

Open my eyes to your ways,
set my feet on the paths you clear.
Beckon me with truth, help me learn,
for you are my saving Way:
here I linger until you lead.
---Psalm 25:4-5 (para. laca)

Linger. Stay. Abide. Wait. How hard is this for you? How long are you willing to wait? How long before you begin to fidget, doodle, fuss, daydream, grumble, toe-tap, throat-clear, or whine? Does it depend on what you are waiting for? How special does it have to be for you to wait patiently? What if you are not sure at all what you are awaiting? What if you are waiting for something you hope for, that you pray you will recognize when it happens?

As we wait in this holy season, how do we sit in our uncertainty? Do we wait in expectation? Trepidation? Do we wait hungering and thirsting to be filled? Searching for a true north? Dare we wait in a silent void, with no voices, no flashing arrows, no yellow brick road? Shall we wait 40 days, while other voices whisper to us from other hills, while the yellow eyes of desert creatures shine unblinking in the night?

Here I linger, until you lead...

...held close in her mother's embrace

Name, my heart is not racing, 
my gaze doesn't search the stars;
my mind doesn't dwell on 
what will always elude me.
Instead, my soul is silent and still, 
content as a weaned child held close 
in her mother's embrace.
---Psalm 131:1-2 (para. laca)

When I nursed my babies, there was a closeness between us, a symbiosis, that is like nothing I have ever shared with any other person. These tiny beings grew in me for months, dependent on my body for every bit of life. Then, the sudden violence of separation. From the warmth and closeness of the womb, shadowy and quiet, to the cold and glare of real life. From that moment of birth, of separation, when somehow one being becomes two people, the search begins. The unquenchable thirst --- for nourishment, yes, but for more. When a babe snuggled into me, it was also in search of that warm, dark place that had been home for so long. Every nerve, every sinew was laser-focused on latching on and settling in, drinking urgently, as if life depended on it. Because life depended on it.

And there were times when I was weary of it. The inconvenience of entertaining a toddler while nursing a baby, all balanced on a toilet in a dirty bathroom stall at McDonald's. The messiness of nursing. The on-call-ness of it. The soreness of it. The way brushing my baby's cheek could set off the craned neck of a Pavlovian response, feeding time or no. The Pavlovian response of my body to the sound of my own baby's cries. There's a weariness about it, no doubt.

But in a little while, or a lot, you and your baby find, together, that the time has come for moving on, to a sippy cup with a whale on it, or a cow, or to a bowl of strained peaches or rice cereal. Nursing, when it happens, loses the frantic searching quality of early infancy, and it is time. Your babe is not a babe, but a child, weaned.

And your child still comes to you in the shadows, nestles into you, head tucked into the space under your chin. You still wrap your arms around your child, you breathe together, you rock back and forth. There is no more frantic striving, none of the urgent needing of infancy. In its place, there is stillness. There is silence. There is contentment.

...into the wild places

And he was blown by the Spirit into the wild places. 
He was there for 40 days, long enough to know, 
tempted by what would have distracted Him from finding.
And the creatures there were wild things,
and angels were close by.
---Mark 1:12-13 (LACA)

This (very loose) poetic paraphrase of Mark's story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness relates an episode from Jesus' life that has always fascinated me. Jesus, fully human, fully God. Both at once. The fully God part is, for my mind, much too vast to ever adequately unpack. The fully human aspect of Jesus' nature means, to me, that Jesus learned and grew, much as we ourselves do. So I wonder if, as the Holy Spirit compelled him into the desert following his baptism in the Jordan by cousin John, he thought to himself, How bizarre. What? What is it you want from me, Spirit? What shall I do? Who do I ask? How will I know? Am I enough?

Am I enough? Who of us hasn't been blown into our own wild places, forced to face the great silence, and wait with the wild things? Who of us hasn't counted off the days, 10, 15, 30, until the days were enough --- enough --- enough? Felt the rhythm of enough-ness in 40? Hasn't felt tempted by the glittery, shimmering thats lurking just off our path of finding?

Don't fear the 40 days. There is One gone before us into the wild places. And there are angels close by.

...snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.
---Christina Rossetti, 1872

Last week, things were definitely looking bright. Yesterday, there was still hope. Even this morning, I awoke with optimism. Now, I surrender. There is no way for me to 'do' holiday this year. Cards. Gifts. Food. Cleaning. Yada yada yada. Not gonna happen. And as if to rub it in, Martha Stewart sent me an email this morning with the subject line "Have the stress free holiday you've always wanted." Correct me if I'm wrong, but the creation of a stress-full holiday is at least 75% Martha Stewart's fault. The other 25% is Pinterest, but Pinterest is gaining.

So, if you happen to be in the part of the world where it might be snowing, step outside or look out the window. If you are here near me in the US south, close your eyes and imagine. Pause the NPR podcast of Serial, turn off tonight's star-spangled Christmas music special on the television. Wait for the silence. Then in the silence, wait for the deep silence. Forget your pursuit of the picture-perfect holiday, and await the arrival of the midwinter miracle. Let Christmas come. And in the silence, let the snow fall.

Snow on snow on snow on snow.

...no journey for the faint-hearted

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded, for with blessing in His hand

Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.

---Liturgy of St. James, 5th cent.

Friends, we step this day onto holy ground; crossing what is sometimes called in Celtic spirituality a ‘thin place’ between one world and another. For this day we begin to mark the Coming, the welcoming not only of the Babe to the manger but of the reign of God in our hearts and in the world. And where we welcome God’s reign, not one thing can remain the same --- not one social construct, not one ‘good old day’, not one stone left on stone. This Advent, this coming, is no journey for the faint-hearted.

So, on the cusp of this new year --- between the brokenheartedness of our shortcomings, our failures, our disappointments, and the possibility, the chance, the prayer that all things will be made new --- let us stand still, silent, awed by the holiness of God come to us as ‘us’. From our eyes, from our hands, from our minds fall any considerations aside from this holiness.

And we worship.