{"id":368,"date":"2010-05-11T10:24:37","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T16:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/mainlineportal\/?p=368"},"modified":"2010-05-11T10:24:37","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T16:24:37","slug":"waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/2010\/05\/waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

When I first finished divinity school, I subscribed to a journal of Christian spirituality called\u00a0Weavings<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 That was when I first heard of the concept of \u201cactive waiting.\u201d\u00a0 Often associated with the liturgical seasons of Lent and Advent, \u201cactive waiting\u201d describes the way in which believers wait for a great spiritual event.\u00a0\u00a0 In the Christian tradition, this spiritual event is often associated with Jesus: waiting for Jesus\u2019 birth; waiting for the second coming of Christ; waiting for the crucifixion and resurrection; waiting for Jesus to be revealed; waiting for the Holy Spirit to come.<\/p>\n

In the days and weeks after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the disciples are often portrayed as waiting. I am fascinated by Luke\u2019s way of recounting this. The disciples have interacted with a risen Jesus.\u00a0 They have broken bread with him.\u00a0 They are talking amongst each other.\u00a0 Jesus appears again, speaks some words of wisdom and concludes with these words: \u201cAnd see I am sending upon you what God promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.\u201d (Luke 24:49)\u00a0 Then Jesus walks a ways with the disciples and, as the tradition names it, ascends into heaven.<\/p>\n

While there is rich theological material to explore about whether or not\u00a0Jesus ascended<\/a> into heaven or not, and whether resurrection is heavenly or earth, bodily or metaphorical, what really captures my attention is the way the disciples are told to wait.<\/p>\n

Stay here<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Stay here until<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Stay here until the power comes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wait<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Just wait<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So they wait.\u00a0 They go to the city and wait.\u00a0 But, the scripture goes on to say, the disciples don\u2019t sit around twiddling their thumbs.\u00a0 Rather, they go to the temple and worship and praise God continually.\u00a0 They wait actively.<\/p>\n

The great priest and author,\u00a0Henri Nouwen<\/a>, says that waiting in scripture is not like waiting for a late bus.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing . . . That\u2019s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it . . . Waiting, then, is not passive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spiritual leaders often use this concept of active waiting to help us to develop the spiritual art of patience.\u00a0 We should practice waiting with prayer and worship and spiritual disciplines.\u00a0 Because, they say, we trust that Jesus will be born, that the Holy Spirit will come, that Christ will return.\u00a0 The liturgical seasons of Lent and Advent remind us to ritually practice waiting for God and trusting in God\u2019s promises<\/p>\n

Contemporary society is often accused of being bad at waiting.\u00a0 We\u2019re impatient.\u00a0 We\u2019ve become accustomed\u00a0to a greater level of immediate gratification than previous generations.\u00a0 Technology facilitates this. We are able to Google information we want.\u00a0 We have 24-hour news cycles. Media images flash by quickly.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to wait in the ways that previous generations waited.\u00a0 We\u2019re not even accustomed to waiting.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of waiting that occurs in the lives of people who live with depression.\u00a0 In between the desire to be well, and the end of the commercial where the woman runs through the sunny field\u00a0with a kite and happy children . . . is a lot of waiting.\u00a0 We wait to feel better.\u00a0 We wait to get better.<\/p>\n

One of the worst waitings is the season when one waits for medication to work.\u00a0 Psychiatrists will often say that it takes about six weeks to begin to feel the effects of\u00a0psychotropic medications<\/a>.\u00a0 And so we have to be patient.\u00a0 We can\u2019t expect to feel better immediately.<\/p>\n

This is a tortuous kind of waiting.\u00a0 After all the time of desperate illness, after finally deciding to be well, after finding a doctor you can afford, get to, and who seems to understand what you\u2019re going through (which is another post all in itself), you\u2019re given medication and told \u2013 it should start to kick in in, say, six weeks.\u00a0 Could anything be crueler?<\/p>\n

In my life, this kind of waiting has an active component as well.\u00a0 Waiting for medication to work is figuring out how strong to steep ginger in tea to cut the incessant nausea of the new pills.\u00a0 Waiting is lying very still on the couch because walking from one room to another in my small apartment makes me dizzy.\u00a0 Waiting is making bland foods with lots of nutrition because I vomit everything spicy and tasty for two weeks.\u00a0 Waiting is driving on curbs and parking at an angle for weeks until I realize that the medication affected my vision and that was somewhere in the 2 sheets of fine print I received from the pharmacist.\u00a0 Waiting is taking the other pill to get rid of the anxiety caused by the pill that is supposed to make me happy.\u00a0 Waiting is calling the doctor back after declaring I can take it no more, and picking another drug, and going to the pharmacist and trying it all over again.<\/p>\n

This is the unseen active waiting for many people who live with mental health challenges.\u00a0 Waiting for health.\u00a0 Waiting for happiness.\u00a0 Waiting for the holy spirit of wellness.\u00a0 Waiting for a change to come.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder if the Christian tradition hasn\u2019t sanitized the disciples\u2019 active waiting.\u00a0 I wonder if the gospel writers made the disciples more patient and pious because the writers knew the end of the story.\u00a0 (After all, when the early Christians find themselves waiting for the second coming of Jesus far longer than they expected, we get more stories of impatience and frustration.)\u00a0 I wonder if the disciples weren\u2019t as anxious and scared and tired as depressed folk can be when waiting for medication to work.\u00a0 I wonder if our religious faith might not feel more accessible if we told that story.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not suggesting that we shouldn\u2019t try to cultivate patience, or that spiritual practices are to be eschewed.\u00a0 Prayer and worship are good things.\u00a0 But, today, I\u2019m not willing to glorify waiting either.\u00a0 Sometimes waiting sucks.\u00a0 Sometimes waiting feels horrible.\u00a0 Sometimes waiting seems like a harsh penalty meted out to someone who has finally admitted what\u2019s wrong, and finally found a doctor.\u00a0 Asking someone to wait seems unkind to ask of someone who has finally found faith.<\/p>\n

This may be a truism of faith: that there\u2019s a lot of painful waiting involved. This may also be the only short cut to waiting for medication to work: faith.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never heard a doctor say it this way, but they\u2019re asking you to have faith in the pill.\u00a0 Have faith that it will work eventually.\u00a0 Have faith that if this one doesn\u2019t work, then they will find another one that will.\u00a0 Have faith in the process of feeling crappy before you feel better.<\/p>\n

Monica A. Coleman is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religions and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in southern California. \u00a0She blogs at <\/em>Beautiful Mind\u00a0Blog<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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