Waiting

This is what I said at the prayer service at Christian Brothers High School:

When my youngest daughter was small, I taught her not to interrupt.  If she had something to say to me while I was talking to an adult, she had to put a patient hand on my arm and wait in silence until I could give her the full light of my attention.  This is a really hard thing for a kid to do, and she wasn’t always patient, but she did it with full faith that her needs would be met.  She only had to wait.

Waiting isn’t easy for little kids.  Frankly it isn’t easy for any of us. Nobody likes being told to wait, especially in this time in human history when we don’t have to wait for much.  When I was your age, now brace yourselves, I had to go to an actual library to look something up if I wanted to do research.  What a wonderful time this is to be a student!  Now when you want to know something, you have millions of texts available at your fingertips. The whole world is available to you and who needs a patient hand when you can access it immediately whenever you want?  This is a powerful tool for knowledge and connection and the world is already a better place for it.

Yet waiting still has an important place in the human condition. One of the things I love most about our faith is the tradition of seasons, holidays, and special time out to reflect and pray.  Advent is awesome and I’m telling you this because in very few other places in life are you going to hear that it’s okay to be still a minute and wait.

Learning to wait is very important.

For example, if you look out at a field in winter with an untrained eye, you might think it’s just a bunch of dead and muddy dirt.  There is nothing growing above the surface. It’s all chaos and immaturity.  But the gardener who loves the land looks at that field and knows that fallow times are necessary for the growth of healthy crops.  The gardener who loves the land looks at that field and knows that just below the surface, seeds are germinating, bulbs are resting, the soil itself is waiting and rejuvenating for the time when the days grow longer and it will sprout green again.  Without the resting and waiting time, the rows become exhausted and will refuse to grow anything but weeds.

If you look back in our own American history, we’ve experienced times of waiting that on the surface looked bleak.  We are often taught in school that the Civil Rights Movement in this country began with Rosa Parks not giving up her seat on a bus, and the young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leading a boycott that resulted in a chain of events leading to freedom and equity for all.  These events did occur and these famous names are great heroes in our American narrative, but did you know that when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a very young man younger than you, he was riding a bus with his teacher on the way home from a speech and elocution contest where he won first prize?  And did you know that on that long bus ride, even after he had achieved so much through study and hard work and integrity, he and his teacher were forced to stand in order to give able bodied white passengers their seats?  It would be many years to wait before young Martin would take an even greater seat as Reverend of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and lead that boycott and make that famous speech at Washington Monument.

And did you know that all during those years when Martin was a child, the pastor who preceded him at that church, a man by the name of Dr. Vernon Johns, the grandson of slaves, was pushing for social change, giving galvanizing sermons from the pulpit, selling fresh produce outside the church after services to nourish his community? Vernon Johns was waiting, preparing his people to fight for the bright at the end of the long unlit tunnel of oppression.  When Dr. Vernon Johns stepped down to make way for the young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the seeds were already planted.  The wait for civil rights for all Americans was too long by an eternity, but during that wait, whole communities full of people like Dr. Vernon Johns and many others were preparing, waiting, acting, praying and having faith that their work would burst into full bloom and chase away the night.

Joseph and Mary faced an oppressive government in their own time.  Just think of that young couple, poor, roaming the land on a donkey, looking for a place to stay.  Moms out there, you know how uncomfortable that must have been, nine months pregnant on the back of a donkey. They did not give up, but set about the quiet work of preparation, in the fullness of their expectation of the light that was about to come. They knew the whole time that they were deeply loved as the whole world waited in quiet preparation for the birth of the Baby that would be our Lord and Brother, and Who would teach us all how to live and love in the light for eternity.

If we want to know more about it, we don’t need to charge up anything but Scripture. According to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter Three, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

So we wait.

Maybe you are thinking, that’s nice Wanket.  What does that have to do with me?

We your teachers look at you, our beautiful, wonderful students. And what to some might look like chaos and immaturity looks to us like process and preparation.  So much of what we are engaged in here at CB is one big long advent, a waiting period, a process of learning and preparation and deep and quiet study while you become who you are, and while you decide what kind of man or woman you are going to be in the light of our God. 

What can you do to honor this season of Advent? 

You can do your reading and your homework.  Actual reading and homework. Education, in the words of my colleague Mr. Delgado, is not the point.  It is the process. Allow yourself the dignity of quiet, contemplative and deep study of the material of your education.

You can work for social justice.  Actual work. Allow yourself to be a part of the sacred preparation for the light of a family who needs food, a child who needs a book, a community that needs healing. 

You can pray.  Actually pray.  Allow yourself the joy of a deep friendship with a God who loves you and wants to be allowed into your heart more than anything.

You can listen.  Actually listen.  Allow yourself to read the Scriptures, to sit in meditation, to listen for the voice of God in your life.

You can wait with a patient hand, waiting through the long night for the light that is surely coming, waiting in the knowledge that you are deeply, and truly loved.