The Sacrament of Waiting

by Fr. James Donelan, S.J.

The English poet John Milton wrote that those who serve only also stand and wait. I think I would go further and say that those who wait render the highest form of service. Waiting requires more discipline, more self-control and emotional maturity, more unshakable faith in our cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in our hearts than all the greatest deeds of derring-do go by the name of action.

Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life - there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have to wait. It must be an important mystery because there is so much waiting in our lives. Everyday is filled with those little moments of waiting (testing our patience and our nerves, schooling us in self-control). We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a friend to call or show up for a date. We wait in line at cinemas and theaters, concerts and circuses. Our airline terminals, railway stations and bus depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait in joy for the arrival of a loved one - or wait in sadness to say goodbye and give the last wave of hand. We wait for springs to come - or autumn – for the rains to begin and stop. And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait for those inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the next stop.

We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first promotion. We wait for success and recognition. We wait to grow up - to reach the stage where we make our own decisions. We cannot remove this waiting from our lives. It is a part of the tapestry of living – the fabric in which the threads are woven to tell the story of our lives. Yet current philosophies would have us forget the need to wait. "Grab all the gusto you can get!" So reads one of America's greatest beer ads - get it now! Instant pleasure, instant transcendence. Do not wait for anything. Life is short - eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow you will die. And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and irresponsible freedom - pre-marital sex and extra marital affairs - they warn against attachments and commitments - against expecting anything of anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us - against dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to hold and wait.

This may be the correct prescription for pleasure - but even that is fleeting and doubtful - what was it Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of pleasure - "Past reason hunted, and once had, past reason hated."

Not if we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well as flesh, soul as well as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if we never learn to wait, we will never learn to love someone other than ourselves.

For most of all waiting means waiting for someone else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday like a stray wind of leaf falling from a tree. Anyone who has loved knows how much waiting goes into it - how much waiting is important for love to grow, to flourish through a lifetime. Why is this? Why can we not have it right now what we so desperately want and need? Why must we wait - two years, three years – and seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask why a tree should take so long to bear fruit – the seed to flower - carbon to change to diamond. There is no simple answer - no more than there is to life's other demands - having to say goodbye to someone you love because either you or they have made other commitments; or because they have to grow and find the meaning of their own lives - having yourself to leave home and loved ones to find your own path - good-byes, like waiting, are also sacraments of our lives.

All we know is that growth - the budding, the flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to give each other a time to grow. There is no way we can make someone else truly love us or we them, except through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting - of being present without asking demands and rewards. There is nothing harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity of our love. But there is life in the gift we give. So lovers wait for each other - until they can see things the same way - or let each other freely see things in quite different ways.

There are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot regain the balance of intimacy of the way they were. They have to wait - in silence - but still present to each other - until the pain subsides to an ache and then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can be woven together again in a single love story. What do we lose when we refuse to wait; when we try to find shortcuts through life - when we try to incubate love and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment we are neither mature nor responsible enough to assume? We lose the hope of truly loving or of being loved. Think of all the great love stories of history and literature - isn't it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but common mystery – that waiting is part of the substance -the basic fabric against which the story of that true love is written. How can we ever find either life or true love if we are too impatient to wait for it?

Waiting is a good thing only if something is worth waiting for. How will you know if it's worth it? Gut feel. What if you don't trust your gut? Pray. You will be enlightened. Trust me. Is it wrong to expect while waiting? It's not wrong, but it will increase your chances of heartbreak and disappointment if things don't work out in the end. Is it good to expect while waiting? It is better to HOPE. What's the difference between hoping and expecting? HOPING means you're open to either side of the coin landing though you're more inclined to believe that things will turn out well. EXPECTING means you're thinking single-track... which won't do you much good at all. What's the difference between waiting and expecting? EXPECTING is waiting for something TO DEFINITELY HAPPEN. WAITING is stayingwhere you are, but not necessarily expecting something to happen definitely.

Do you need assurance from someone you're waiting for while you're waiting? Ideally, yes. But realistically, do you really want assurance from this person? It's so easy to just point at something and make that the reason why you're waiting ("Because she said..." "Because he told me that..."). With WAITING, all you really can rely on are three things: your gut feel, your heart and mind. Just YOURSELF, not anyone else. So should you wait? What does your gut say? How does your heart feel? What does your mind think? If they're saying different things, keep asking yourself these three questions (and pray!) until you get a solid answer.

THEN you'll know if he or she is worth waiting for.

tonyang and teban

i miss these random photo op sessions me and toni used to have at work... glad we got to do it again after such a long time...

steve and air

here's a pic of steve trying to hide behind air. the air is so thick around steve...it tickles... a ticklish air is a fun air. and steve is an air sign... especially the middle air...it's so ticklish, it's not even funny... but the rest sometimes are... and as they say, you can't breathe with no air -- andres

p.s. this is in connection with andres' blog which should be read first...here's the link

letters... from rainer maria rilke

"i want to beg you, as much as i can...to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it live along some distant day into the answer."

my lil bro from d'planet

a special belated birthday greeting is in order...for my lil bro from d'planet -- andres. a month ago, you shared your fave pic of ours, now lemme share my fave pic of you and me (thanks to kuya bodjie for taking this). i know you're now 32 (hihi) but to me, you'll always be 20 years younger...my very own lil 12-year-old bro, especially in this pic. :p

happy birthday cocoy! -- from your big (lil) sis

reunion

just got home a couple hours ago from dinner with my 2 best friends whom i haven't seen in a while. it was great catching up with them again. i realized i missed them much more than i thought i did. i never thought that after 10 or so years of doing this with them that i'd still be as excited to talk to them as if we were just getting to know each other the first time. who'd have thought that after 10 or so years, after all the changes we've gone through, both individually and as a group, that we'd still be talking non-stop, some about the same things and some of new things. it was so easy to slip into that familiar mode and usual routine of talking after not seeing much of each other lately. the 5 hours together seemed to just fly by. it's like we never left and we just saw each other the other day. i, for one, never thought i'd maintain such a longstanding friendship with others. me being the antisocial loner/hermit, i never thought i'd appreciate and crave for this that much. but these 2 have been crucial to me opening up to others. i feel that i'm more in touch with my emotions, and more expressive of my feelings to others because of what i learned from them. i guess i've come a long way and they're the 2 people who can truly attest to that as they've seen the me before and the me now.

i'm really glad we all got together again after so long. they are truly one of my "real" support groups that has stood the test of time. we've had our skirmishes in the past, some highs and lows, and even dryness in the friendship, but here we are after more than a decade still talking, still understanding, still listening. we've changed so much with each other and yet we've also changed so little. we've seen the best and worst of each other, but we're still here with each other. i used to think i didn't need people that much in my life, but these 2 have proved me wrong. i do need people and i do need them especially in my life.

i feel extremely blessed to have them in my life caring and looking out for me always... as a tribute to this friendship, here's a video clip from a movie all 3 of us love and adore. it's interesting how we all watched this separately but still connected with it and raved about it the same way. we really are friends. :) i know we're more boring and less crazy, and less quirky, and less funny, than these characters... but everytime i watch this film, i can't help but think of the 3 of us...

to myly and monique... i love you both... and i will always cherish our friendship... hope we remain this way forever. :)

p.s. sorry for the mush but the only reason i'm writing this way and pouring my heart out like this is 'coz of you two... for this, you've got no one to blame but yourselves. hehe...

avenue q

reminiscing back to my avenue q days... just finished listening to the whole CD again after years without it... makes me feel good and grounded and real again even if it sucks to be me at times, as i'm still trying to find my purpose, while thinking that everyone's a little bit racist once in a while, when the internet is for porn anyway, after having created a mix tape, hoping that fantasies come true, despite the fact that there's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time (this goes out to tones), realizing that there is life outside your apartment when all you can think about is the more you ruv someone, the more you want to kir them, intensely feeling schadenfreude, as you tell yourself, "i wish i could go back to college," until you finally accept and are relieved that everything in life is only for now...