Plan B or Hopeful Waiting?

One of my favorite Advent readings is Henri Nouwen's piece, "Waiting for God" found in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas for November 28. It's taken from "A Spirituality of Waiting" in The Weavings Reader, based on a sermon by Nouwen. So it was lovely to be able to turn to it this morning on this first Sunday of Advent. I invite you to read it in one of those places, if you can, and come back. I'll wait.

Nouwen captures our issues with waiting: the fear and frustration that usually infuse our waiting, and he looks at the Advent heroes of waiting: Zechariah, Anna, Elizabeth and Mary, whose waiting was done securely in the promises from God in their lives. They wait actively, present and alive to the moment. They wait in hope.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

Living in faithful hope is hard. I've been writing songs about waiting. I am happy to celebrate that I did use the word hope in my new anthem, Waiting. And if you wait until the fourth Sunday of Advent, I will record my church choir doing the premiere of that piece and will post it here.

It is the same watchful expectancy that Matthew 24: 42 calls us to. This morning we sang this hymn text to go with the Matthew text:

Keep alert, be always ready,

God's time approaches sure and steady,

God's strength will keep your heart from blame.

Clouds, the Spirit's light concealing,

disperse, God's purest light revealing;

creation will its Sovereign name.

Dry branches burst forth green,

God's advent signs are seen:

Hallelujah!

Christ's judgment won,

God's will be done;

God's new dominion thus begun.

New Century Hymnal #112

with this tune.

"God's will be done?" One of the things I've done in the last few months while waiting in the search and call process is to think about Plan B options. I've called it thinking outside the box. But since I found this wonderful piece on God's Call to Plan B, let's explore the idea of waiting in hope as living in Plan B.

God's Call, Plan B?

The Bible is full of plan B stories. Joseph who had so many aborted plans in his life gives us this message. He tells his terrified brothers, "You meant to do harm but God meant to bring good out of it by preserving the lives of others . . ." You may want to stop now and read the whole story again. (Genesis 50:18-21.) All of life is plan B. …

At this time of year, Mary and Elizabeth are our models. What a plan B they both lived. Luke 1:26-56. Are there some clues for my life? Mary spent time quiet and alone to hear God. Obedient to what she heard she hurried to check it out with a trusted friend. She and Elizabeth apparently shared a vision of what could be. Wondering what God might be doing? Could they really be part of the plan? You can almost feel their joy and excitement as you read the story. Maybe they thought about Hannah. Her song was similar to Mary's. (I Samuel 1:26-2:10). Certainly there were many times in their lives that they had cause to think that God had got it all wrong.

What does it take to live abundantly in plan B?

Waiting in hope, living in hope, requires faith and understanding that God keeps promises. As God calls us, God will sustain us. We need to be present to God's continued call and presence. What does the Lord require of you today? (Still Micah 6: 8?)

This is a good time, to follow Mary's example , and look for community and friends to wait with you as you wait on God's call. Online this weekend, I found two great website resources and communities that I'd like to share with you:

1) Lumunos is the successor to Faith at Work and has a wonderful set of resources on God's call in our lives, including the full piece on Plan B, mentioned above.

2) The Uncluttered Heart provides a daily Advent reflection and is also a book, and provides an option for an online Advent retreat. I found this site because The Upper Room originally published Nouwen's piece on waiting and they also published The Uncluttered Heart by Beth Richardson.

How is God calling you? What is God's promise for you in that call? How do you sustain your hope and faith? If your faith and hope are in tatters, perhaps you can trust God to mend it for you, as poet, Emily Dickinson, who wrestled with faith and doubt wrote:

To mend each tattered Faith

There is a needle fair

Though no appearance indicate –

'Tis threaded in the Air --

And though it do not wear

As if it never Tore

'Tis very comfortable indeed

And spacious as before --

For Advent, I'm planning on reading through more of Dickinson's poetry in a reflective way with the help of this book: Mending a Tattered Faith by Susan VanZanten. Let me know if you can join me. Meanwhile, welcome to Advent, where we learn again the lessons we need about waiting and hope and about being present and ready to hear God's call, in whatever guise it comes.

Wait List-It's Advent

So, it's Advent.

It's waiting time.

I've been re-reading some wonderful writings on the spiritual value of waiting, for example, see A Spirituality of Waiting by Henri Nouwen, also found as "Waiting for God" in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas.

I often describe myself as a patient person, but Nouwen really has me pegged this year—I'm tired of waiting: I want to be doing something. In particular, I want to be doing that which I spent the last five years in seminary preparing to do: I want to be a pastor. I want a church to call me to their pulpit.

Now, I'm not unemployed, for which I give thanks, and the work I do is important to the stability of the agency where I work, and we do good work on the behalf of elders in the community. But I don't know whether I am so unlike Zechariah and Elizabeth in some ways (Luke chapter 1): I've been doing good, but this isn't all that I want to be doing.

Perhaps you too are also waiting for something: for a job, for the economy to improve, for peace in the world, for love, for a child, for some project to come to fruition, for health care reform, for a cure, or even for Christmas.

As I often do I looked to music and the poets whose lyrics are set to music to hear what they have to say and I assembled this song list—a wait list. (Most of these are available on iTunes: see this iMix, except as noted.) The music led me on…

Wait list: It's Advent

Song		Artist
When One Door Closes		Carrie Newcomer
O Come, O Come Emmanuel		Sufjan Stevens (worth getting the physical box set for the graphics)
Holy Spirit Come To Us		Taizé
Come On Come On		Mary Chapin Carpenter
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing		Jack Johnson
Waitin' For A Superman		Iron & Wine
Waitin' On A Sunny Day		Bruce Springsteen
I'm Waiting for Jesus		Thomas A. Dorsey
Wait for the Light to Shine		Nashville Gospel Singers
Wait for the Lord		Taize
God of Still Waiting		Composer: Alfred Fedak, Text: Carl Daw (I have a personal recording and couldn't find a public one available, but this is a lovely piece of music)
For God, My Soul Waits in Silence		Marty Haugen
Love Is Waiting		Brooke Fraser
Wait and See		Brandon Heath
If Not Now		Carrie Newcomer On new CD forthcoming, but demo available now
O Come, O Come Emmanuel		Enya

I noticed that several of those songs were inspired by Psalm texts, so, in hopes of a word from God, I looked to one of the grumbling Psalms.

Psalm 27

Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!

If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.

Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.

That's right! Let's just call God to account!

Oh, but what's this in the next verse?

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Wait for the Lord… Isn't that what I'm having trouble doing??

Okay, maybe the prophets can help us have a little foresight about this time of waiting. Isaiah is very popular during Advent, after all. And prophets often get right in God's face about the issues that are on their minds.

Isaiah 40.26-31

Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? God who brings out the host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

God does not faint or grow weary; God's understanding is unsearchable. The Lord gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Well, that's something at least: "those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength," but how does that happen? I'm glad that God is not weary, but I am.

My favorite passage in Romans chapter 5 then came to mind, as I memorized it in the King James version:

… we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

Okay, but enough of the tribulation, patience, and experience, already. I need a little more help to get to hope. I pushed a little further ahead in Romans to chapter 8.

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

I don't have so much patience anymore, and I don't even know what or how to ask at this point. But the next verse covers that.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs and groans too deep for words.

Okay, I don't know about you, but I can do sighs and groans. Perhaps gasps and shrieks as well—don't you think that's what happened when the angel approached Zechariah, or Mary?

In "Waiting for God," Nouwen writes,

Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, "Don't be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention."

But there is more. Waiting is open-ended. Open-ended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something that we wish to have. Much of our waiting is filled with wishes: "I wish that I would have a job. I wish that the weather would be better. I wish that the pain would go." …

But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended.

I have found it very important in my own life to let go of my wishes and start hoping. It was only when I was willing to go of wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations could happen to me.

Is it that I have been wishing and not waiting? Yet I didn't include "When you wish upon a star" on my wait list of songs—insightful of me, don't you think?

Once again, I am reminded to turn it over to God, that I have been called by God, that hope is the journey I am on.

And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God's purpose. (Romans 8: 27-28)

May all of us be able to wait with this hope in this season.

Women waiting, women singing

Advent 2005
I read a wonderful piece by Henri Nouwen in my Advent readings (November 28 in Watch for the Light by Orbis Press) about the spiritual practice of waiting. This is a time of year when we have to wait, by intention during the Advent season if we pay attention, or by default as we wait in line or on snowy roads. Often at this time of year our waiting is grumpy and passive: "I had to wait for hours!" Spiritual practice waiting is waiting with a sense of promise; spiritual practice waiting is not passive or hopeless, but active. "The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun." (p. 31) From the familiar Christmas story, Nouwen mentions Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary as ones who typify this spiritual practice. Keep the faith as you have to wait for things, or ponder these things in your hearts, the seed that has been planted.

At this or any time of year there is not a restorative spiritual practice that includes a shopping frenzy, or rude drivers, or bad weather, but there are compensatory spiritual practices: smiling at harried store clerks and thanking them, for example, or deciding to spend ten minutes as a gift to ten people and waving the people who are waiting at intersections into the flow of traffic. And remember it's a practice to do this, not perfection.

Friday I took a mental wellness day--excellent timing as we got an amazing thundersnow and that meant I wasn't driving in that, but safely at home. I did a little deconstructive writing about Hell--but I won't go into more of that. School work continues to be engaging.

I did go out to the Mount Holyoke Christmas Vespers concert in Boston--taking public transportation because I hadn't shoveled out completely. As I walked by, I reminded someone who was shoveling and bemoaning that he didn't get his run in today that shoveling snow is really one of the best exercises to burn calories. Good to remember as I face another hour of it this morning.

The Vespers concert was wonderful. Cathy Melhorn, who was my advisor in college, is retiring, so this was her last Christmas Vespers concert. Despite the snow, the church was full of an audience there to honor her and enjoy the music. There was a solid five minutes of applause at the end of the concert--great concert. I also saw a number of friends from college whom I hadn't seen in several years who had come in from upstate New York and Vermont and Chicago. That's one of the gifts of holiday events--the people you might see there. It was good to catch up, even briefly.

I was reminded that the processional, the second antiphon for Christmas Hodie Christus natus est which is used before the Magnificat, was one of those pieces of music that was absolutely formational in both my musical and spiritual life. At this Vespers it's done by candlelight, and last night the movement of the sound of young women's voices as they were walking by was a flashback. The flashback though, was not just thirty years to when I did this, but back a thousand years or more. As they walked, singing, carrying single candles into a darkened stone vaulted church, bringing in the light, the music echoes in time--it's not just resonant in space. I actually referred to this chant in a paper last month as part of the link that music is in my pastoral or operative theology. Today Christ is born; my soul magnifies the Lord. Perhaps it is not a surprise that it echoes still. Mary's song, from the first chapter of Luke is one of the most powerful of Biblical prayers, echoing as it does Hannah's song before the birth of her son, Samuel (I Samuel 2: 1-10--can you tell that I'm taking Hebrew Bible classes this semester?). Women's voices bringing light and hope into the dark world: "God makes poor and makes rich; God brings low and also exalts. God raises up the poor from the dust; God lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor." "God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. … God has filled the hungry with good things and the rich God has sent empty away."

One of the contemporary pieces tonight by Libby Larsen used this poem text by Catherine de Vinck which captured that idea:
The Womanly Song of God (2003)
I am the woman dancing the world
alive:
Birds on my wrists
sun-feathers in my hair
I leap through hoops of atoms:
under my steps
plants burst into bloom
birches tremble in silver.
Can you not see the roundness of me:
curves of the earth
Maternal arms of the sea
I am the birthing woman
kneeling by the river
Heaving, pushing forth a sacred body
Round, round the wind
spinning itself wild
Drawing great circles of music
across the sky.
Round the gourd full of seeds
round the moon in its ripeness
Round the door through which I come
stooping into your house.
I am the God of a thousand names:
why cannot one of them be
Woman singing?

I give thanks to and for those people in my life like Cathy Melhorn, and other fine teachers and musicians, who help me and others create life, and soul, and joy, and insight from little black dots on paper: both words and music. May song bless each of our hearts in this season.
Peace, hope, joy, love, and faith: our prayers for this time of waiting,
Nancy