The Time In Between

This past week seemed vacant, with few dates in my Day-Runner (Luddite that I continue to be!), just lots of hurrying up and waiting. I was called for jury duty downtown. It is formidable enough to take on-line orientation, to get through rush hour traffic, to find the correct courthouse, to go through security without setting off the alarm, to present the right documents. Then, when all those things are done, you are asked to “take a break” for the next hour, and wait until your name is called.

So I waited…had “meaningful work” to do, and like the busy little bee, improved each shining hour. I took the opportunity at lunch break to explore a part of down town I didn’t know, basked in the sun by a fountain,  walked about  5000 of the daily 10, 000 step requirement, returned to my waiting place, and waited. I finished my work, picked up a magazine, found a crossword puzzle, looked at the clock again. Then the call came to report in two days to a jury selection process for a trial that would last 18 days in another court building. And apparently, I had reached the end of my capacity to wait. I began to entertain a mild panic about how to re-arrange the lans and appointments I had made; I began to be resentful of the demands of citizenship, make lists of people whom I had to call, and devise alternate arrangements for the next days. Where was the peace of Christ in me in this mundane, non-perilous incursion into my own plans for my life?

It was embarrassing  to acknowledge that in my Spirit journey, I am heavily reliant on things going my way, under my control, on my schedule. It is as if I only trust God when things are going according to plan, my plan. I was angry and anxious about many things. What was I supposed to do with the unknowing of my schedule for 18 days, this time in-between the certain and uncertain? The Spirit in mercy gentled me through the week by directing me to old practices that apparently I forgot to  bring with me to the Superior Court Building:

• breath prayer- in this season of Easter, I remembered Jesus appearing in the well-locked room to his frantic disciples, and breathing Spirit on them: “Breathe on us, Holy Spirit, breathe in us, Breath of God, to do justice and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.” These words  written and set to music by my friend Ruthanne Svendsen opened a physical and emotional passageway for the release of fear and the intake of energetic patience.
• listening for a Word- after Jesus breathed on his loved ones, he gave them instruction. As I waited in traffic, in the courthouse halls, for selection to be made, for statements of intent to be made, I would remember a Word of Scripture that came from my reading earlier in the day: “continue to do good” from Galatians stuck with me as I conversed with people on the jury pool who were from worlds I never meet, people who were glad to be heard, people whose jury service was much more costly than mine would be.
• remember that the Holy One is HERE- “Surely God is in THIS place, and I did not know it,” says Jacob of the rocky wilderness. And so The Mystery inhabits the courthouse, the civic mall, the outdoor fast food restaurant, the parking structure. And the Holy One loves this person to whom I am listening- an attorney, a judge, a bailiff.

Recalling these old practices anchored me in this limbo. And then the case was settled before it went to trial, and I was free, soberly reminded of how easily I get unmoored from the One who holds me fast.

The next day I found myself again waiting…for a slow car wash, a ineffective teach person, a slow parking line. Lessons learned? I pray that it is so.