This present moment

In some sense it always Advent, even now in Lent. We are pilgrims, ever leaning into the future. To quote Walter Burghardt, SJ, “every tomorrow has it’s own tomorrow”. We are always waiting. Yet. Yet we are living now, in this precise moment. It is all we have. The past has slipped through our fingers, the future is for the moment unknowable. It can feel like we are merely marking time, or enduring the storms that rage. Yet. Yet we can live, not wrapped in our own thoughts, but awake to the needs that present themselves now, awake to each other, awake to God…

Walter Burghardt, SJ in an Advent homily.

“I have one swift answer: live in hope! Both words are important, indispensable, irreplaceable: hope and live. You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today's human and Christian promised be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope. But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment – really live it, not just endure it – because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.

If you want to lift Advent from liturgy to life, don't waste your days with sheer waiting. Wait indeed, for tomorrow promises to be rich in life and love. But life and love are here today, because God is here today — because your brothers and sisters are here today.”

 

A list of things to write about

I've been teaching a first-year course that centers around close reading and writing. The title of the course is "Women Who See Through Walls" about women poets and mystics and scientists. As part of the thread that links the course together we have been reading selections from Natalie Goldberg's beautiful book Writing Down the Bones. One of the last selections we read was called "A list of things to write about". I haven't had much time to write on the blog this semester, teaching three different courses with three different preps each of with a boatload of grading, along with a couple of other writing assignments, have sucked up all my time. But I have been keeping a list of things to write about!

1. The blessing of sparrow-grass; also some weird word that started with c or g and that I can't figure out where I scribbled it down.

2. Shrikes. OMG, I cannot get a description of these birds and their habits when it comes to food out of my head. Thanks New York Times crossword puzzle.

3. Fingernails. Not the things on the end of your fingers but what my grandmother used to call a particular sort of butter mint. The college bookstore had the peppermint version of these, which I had not seen in years. I bought a bag.

4. It appears that AI can write homilies, but should they? I'm really bothered by the thought.

5. Advent calendars are having a moment. I heard a piece on NPR about them, and there was a piece in the Washington Post. I was struck by someone who said the point was to get rewarded every day that we managed to wait. I'm all about waiting, and leaning in to my desire for the living God in Advent. There is an asceticism to that waiting that I'm loathe to give up. That said I'm also all in on Advent calendars, both those that just have numbers behind the doors and those that might have special treats behind them.

6. There's a whole set of math memes going around riffing on the elf on the shelf. Heard about the elf on a shelf? What about the quadratic in the attic? or X on the T Rex? or the lemniscate on the gate?...tell me you're laughing...

And last but not least, a new book is out which has two of my homilies in it. One for Lent and one for the feast of All Saints. A Prisoner and You Visited Me is part of the Homilists for the Homeless series, put out by Clear Faith press and edited by indomitable deacon Jim Knipper. All of the homilists (which include Fr. Jim Martin and chemist Mags Blackie) have donated their time and writing and all the proceeds from this particular book to help those in prison. You can find the book here!

Advent 1: A Little Office for Advent

My brother and sister-in-law's cat waiting
for their return.

We tend to view waiting as problematic, penitential even. And it can be.  We wait for forks in the road, to know our fates, in things trifling and significant.  This waiting can be hard, for change is potentially ahead, with all the uncertainty that brings. Will I get this fellowship? What will the test results show?

But there is the other kind of waiting, the yearning for something or someone to arrive.  We went to California to see my youngest son, who I hadn't hugged since the middle of August, and to see family up the coast.

This sort of waiting challenges my relationship with time.  I want to arrive, but once there I want time to move with the traffic on I-5 on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving.  I wait, only to wait again.  For departures. And for the next arrival.  (He's coming home in less than three weeks!  I can hardly wait. Again.)  This waiting is liturgy, a cycle that sharpens senses and soul, and slowly peels my fingers away from the things I cling too tightly to.  A Little Office of Advent.

Column: (Advent 1) What is my strength that I should wait?

After I wrote the introduction to this column, Crash got some relief from waiting. He heard from one of his early action schools, letting him know that he would be offered admission. You can listen to a reading of "My Little Sister Ate One Hare" here. Warning, there are definitely violations of the Seven Motifs Ban in this poem. In retrospect, I shouldn't be surprised that such topic arise at the table on occasion. Clearly, it's my fault.

The photo is of rough ice on the beach at Eastern Point, taken the winter I made the Exercises there.

This column appeared in the print version of the Catholic Standard & Times on 1 December 2011. It is the first of four Advent reflections on waiting, the next three will be on the new Catholic Philly website.

What is my strength that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should be patient? Job 6:11

Advent aside, it is the season of waiting in my house. A month ago, Mike clicked “submit” on the last of his early college applications — his hopes for the next four years of his life gathered into a swirl of electrons and sent forth. Now, he waits.

Waiting is a way of life. We wait on line, we wait for news — good and bad, we wait for a change in the weather, we wait for the weekend and a chance to sleep. Like most us, I suspect, I find waiting is easier if I can find something else to think about besides how long I’m waiting. I can still remember most of the words to “My Little Sister Ate One Hare,” a particularly long and silly counting poem I would haul out while waiting in long lines with the boys when they were small. It was a great distraction.

Advent brings me face to face with the practice of waiting - undistracted. The waiting we are called to in Advent is one that focuses on our destiny, our hope, not one that tries to turn away from what is coming. And as Job laments, it is not an easy practice to undertake. It requires strength and patience.

Now that Mike’s college applications are sent off, the inevitable questions come from family and friends: “So where are you going to college?” All Mike can say is, “I won’t know for a while yet.” “When?” “I don’t quite know.”

Mike’s uncertainty about his future — and Job’s — makes me wonder if Advent’s steady countdown to Christmas has obscured the most difficult aspect of waiting. Waiting is different when we don’t know what precisely the future will bring, and when and how it might unfold.
Father Henri Nouwen writes in his essay “The Spirituality of Waiting,” that a practice of undistracted waiting is not only attentive to what will come, but is alert to the present moment. Mary carried Jesus, hidden from the world who waited for Him to come, yet Elizabeth sees her, attentive to the stirrings within her and knows that Jesus is already here. Perhaps Advent can teach me, too, to be attentive to what is stirring within me, to the encounters with God who is hidden from my sight, and like Elizabeth, be moved beyond passive acknowledgement, to prayer and to action.

An ancient commentary on this passage in Job suggests a similar practice of attentiveness in the face of open-ended waiting. To wait is “to be in love with the roughness of this world in hopes of the eternal.” To wait is not to be relieved of anxiety or difficulty, but to be alert to signs of hope rustling, to the breath of the Spirit upon chaos.

The last line of Psalm 27, sung at Mass on the first Friday of Advent, acknowledges the difficulty of waiting attentively. “Wait for the Lord with courage,” we are advised. “Let your heart be bold,” offers another translation of the same verset.

And to what end do I wait? What do I boldly ask for? What I am looking for amidst the roughness of this world? This I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

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Almighty God, please grant that your people may watch most carefully for the coming of your only Son. As he himself…has taught us, may we be vigilant, with our lamps burning; and may we hasten to meet him when he comes. Amen. — Martin O’Keefe, S.J. in Oremus

The practice of waiting

My contemplative class (whose traveling adventures were previously chronicled here) is reading and talking about Quakerism. We began class today by waiting until someone was moved to speak (we've spend enough time together in silence to be able to do this). We noted that it can be awkward to wait in this way. Will anyone talk? I found I had to remind myself to not talk merely to "coach" them along. Wait. Until. Someone is moved.

We spent some time talking about waiting, and its role in the contemplative life. Our last meeting had focussed on what constitutes obedience in the lay contemplative life — reading Madeleine Delbrel where she recommends using the vagaries of life to form oneself in obedience. At the end of class today I noted that one practice I use to foster patience is to let the person behind me in line at the supermarket go ahead of me. Particularly when it's really crowded. One of my students noted that just the thought made her anxious. "Me, too. That's why I keep practicing."

I'm writing about waiting for Advent...how do you practice waiting? or do you?

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Jim McDermott, S.J. has some interesting thoughts about waiting on God, the Spiritual Exercises and Advent here.