(except for good things like Christmas and childbirth and vacations- waiting times that are filled with delicious daydreams about what we will actually experience when the joyful time arrives)
but, even with our dislike of the process, there are many times when we are called to wait- or at least shown that it would be the prudent course of (non) action.
At those times, the excruciating discomfort of cooling our jets and finding something else to do with our energy can be mentally and even physically challenging.
Several years ago when I was going through a painful time in my life I read the book, When the Heart Waits, by Sue Monk Kidd. The subtitle of her book is spiritual direction for life's sacred questions. In that book I found much wisdom to get me to take a few healthy steps in the direction of wholeness. I have gone back to When the Heart Waits many times since then to read again her words of wisdom. Today those words are calling to me yet another time. May they help you also, dear spiritual pilgrim, on whatever journey you are called, to take a few healthy steps in the direction of wholeness today.
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"Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping-- they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity."
When we are asked to wait... "we're asked to collaborate with grace.
That doesn't mean grace isn't a gift. Nor does it mean the deliberate process of waiting produces grace. But waiting does provide the time and space necessary for grace to happen. Spirit needs a container to pour itself into. Grace needs an arena in which to incarnate. Waiting can be such a place, if we allow it."
"Transformations come only as we go the long way round, only as we're willing to walk a different, longer, more arduous, more inward, more prayerful route."
"Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new?...
Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions."
"The natural gradient in us is toward growth. Whatever we use repeatedly and compulsively to stop growth is our particular addiction....Darting through life at a progressively increasing speed diverts us from deeper realities. Likewise, latching onto easy, quick-fix solutions becomes a way of escaping the slow pain of uncertainty and self-confrontation. It helps us to avoid the misery of wading through the inner mire toward change.
The quick and easy path is an "acceptable" way of avoidance, and one that can hold enormous power over us. We might complain (though that complaint is often hard to distinguish from boasting) of how pushed and hurried we feel, but we can't seem to extricate ourselves from the frenzy. We're unable to truly see that 'there is more to life than increasing its speed' as Ghandi put it........
....I had to face the fact that my inability to wait was symptomatic of something amiss in my soul."
"Contemplative waiting is consenting to be where we really are. People recoil from it because they don't want to be present to themselves."
Brother Anthony at the Abbey of Gethsemani
"Entrainment is the phenomenon of two rhythmic things gradually altering their movements until they're moving together in the same rhythm. Pendulums hanging on the same wall do it; crickets do it when they chirp; even people do it when they talk. The point is we tend to align ourselves wiht the rhythm and pace around us. If you want to stay in your waiting, you'll need to refrian from the frantic pace around you. The important thing is to be still."
Dr. Beatrice Bruteau
"When we learn to wait, we experience where we are as what is truly substantial and precious in life. We discover, as T. S. Eliot wrote, "A lifetime burning in every moment."
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