Writing What I See

Tag: faith

  • A Different Kind of Waiting

    December 2010

    In Advent, we wait for God to come, like Mary waited to give birth. The world becomes God’s womb, a dark place, closed in on itself, yet holding a hidden speck of bright light that will soon burst into radiance. A shadow of fear does hang over the waiting of pregnancy–fear that something might go wrong, fear of losing that which is unseen, yet already treasured. But in general, the kind of waiting experienced in pregnancy is expectant waiting, the kind that shows itself to the world in a glowing, enigmatic smile. It is impatient waiting, the kind that bubbles with barely-contained joy.

    Last week, I experienced another kind of Advent waiting, however, different from the eager countdown of days before a baby comes. I sat beside my mother’s body, awaiting the transport to the funeral home. With no one to talk to, I looked around the small room where my mother had spent the last four years. The bedspread lay crumpled in a chair,no longer folded meticulously across the foot of her bed. Someone had turned on too many lamps, even the ones that she always forgot to light. She lay in bed, as if sleeping, but her spirit had clearly left her face, along with the anxious wrinkles around her eyes. Time stood still in that stuffy little room, a womb in which presence was giving birth to absence. I knew that when the men came with their gurney to take her body, I would not see her face again, at least in this life. I knew that when she left that room, there would be, for me, an empty hole in the world. I waited resignedly and deliberately for that inevitable moment, though, as the minutes crept silently by, afraid to call attention to themselves. It was the opposite of incarnation.

    Thinking today about these two different kinds of waiting, and reflecting on mothers, I was reminded of Zbigniew Herbert’s poem, “Mother.” He likens a child to a ball of yarn, unwinding from a mother’s lap to spill out into the world. The mother, however, holds onto the end of the string, winds it around her finger protectively, and waits, even though she knows that the unraveled yarn will never return to her “knees’ sweet throne.” She waits, as her “outstretched arms glow in the dark like the old town.” 

    Doesn’t God wait for us like a mother? While we tremble in fragile expectation for God, doesn’t God stretch out steady and determined arms for us, the children who might never return? As we wait for life, and for death, and for life again, I think that impatient expectation might be over-rated. A moment in those timeless, glowing arms, a holy moment in between the bustle of life and the silence of death, is to crawl back into the lap of God.

  • The Queen of Flowers

    November 2010

    Years ago, I bought a beautiful rose bush with delicate pink buds, like those on fine china. The flowers opened like the sky at dawn, and everyone who passed by praised their beauty. But I was not a faithful gardener. When the sun beat down in the summer, I often forgot to provide water. When pests came to eat the leaves, my eyes were elsewhere. I didn’t provide the food that my plant needed in order to grow, yet when I noticed that my rose bush was dying, I blamed its own delicate constitution and the inordinate amount of care that it seemed to demand. Soon, the branches were dry and brittle, the flowers gone, and sharp thorns pointed empty and accusing fingers toward the sky. I gave up on growing roses.

    The next spring, I noticed new growth slowly creeping forth from the gnarled stem and rising toward the sun. The leaves on these low branches looked different than the original leaves, however–smaller and less elegant. When the new blossoms came, bright and full, they too were different–they were not curled mysteriously into themselves but were flat and open to the sky. The specialists told me that this new growth was the real plant coming to life; the old one that had died had been grafted onto this wild stem in order to create a delicate work of man-made perfection to fit our ideals of the perfect rose. To me, the new growth seemed miraculous, a sign of God’s invisible grace, turning failure into flowers, bringing truth to light.

    The hybrid rose–Queen of the Flowers, magnificent in beauty, delicate in perfection, dangerously regal with thorns–reminds me of our metaphor of Christ the King.We need an image for the power and splendor of God, an image that we work hard to maintain in an often dry and barren world. But God is at work underneath that glorious image, creating new life when and where we least expect it, “making peace through the blood of [Christ’s] cross.” Abundant life is not found in the hybrid flower but surges deep within the neglected stem. Like the criminal hanging next to Jesus on the Cross, we just need to recognize and claim it.

    When I neglect my soul and my world, O Christ, you continue to abide somewhere deep within them. I give thanks for the wild, new growth that you secretly nourish, the invisible love that turns my barren failures into strong and hearty fruit. Amen.