A Psalm of Waiting...

Psalm 62 was the passage shared in service today.

This "Psalm of Waiting" begins,  "For God alone my soul waits in silence;"

I've realized over the past four years how beneficial it has been for me to 'wait in silence' and have developed this ability by participating in several silent retreats.  Learning to wait in silence for God has taught me many things - one being, that after an extended time of silence I carry a sense of peace and calm with me through my days.  Anxiety, frustrations, etc are minimized because somehow there is within me a quiet spirit.  Uncertainty becomes 'okay' - I don't always need to know the answers, I don't always need to make things happen so that 'everything is taken care of.'

Still need to put up the mirror and towel ring:)

And so, the renovations, which move ever so slowly, are 'okay' - no matter that I'm surprised and somewhat dismayed when I realize that we need to repair little holes in the walls[sometimes more than once], sand, wipe down, prime, sand again, and paint at least twice... and then the tape that is supposed to protect a wall already painted removes the paint no matter how gently your pull it off and the process begins again.  But we are progressing inch by inch and yesterday the washroom looked a bit more complete as we put the curtains and the extra towel bar up. 

And it's 'okay' that it is taking longer than expected to repair the garage roof... which now sports a blue tarp because we need more roofing tiles...

In a life that is constantly busy, constantly full of noise, demands, and responsibilities we tend to ignore the call of our souls to silence.  And waiting and silence are important complements.  It is super difficult to sit quietly, in silence, to attend to God, to rest from telling God how he might answer my concerns or set the world straight!  It's super difficult for me to sit quietly without having a book, or a paint brush, or a pen in my hand... always ready to think or create.  Being privileged to be born into a family of 'creative doers' this is exceptionally difficult - because it seems so un-productive!

I was reminded of this today while reading my sister's blog where she comments on this tension when producing objects out of clay but not being able to fire them until the electrician can hook up the kiln in mid-September! Hence the feeling of an incomplete process of productivity.  All the same it seems she is enjoying the creative multi-step somewhat meditative process required in the forming of the clay...  You can check out her blog: "My Life in Clay"  http://perimichelle.blogspot.ca/

Perhaps the process is as, if not more, important than the final product... How often do we focus on God's Kingdom to come and lose focus on God's kingdom now? How often do we hurry and scurry around to get to our destination - but miss the quiet moments that can be experienced in the process of getting there?

Life is full of small moments and learning to be silent enables me to accept each as one more step in a process, one more bit of path in the journey, one more moment in learning to know someone a bit better.

In all of this I keep hoping to see more clearly the intertwining of the sacred with the 'here and now' [Henri Nouwen], to blend a measure of God's view from above and my view from below [Philip Yancey], to understand that 'what I experience in the world of faith must be measured against what I see, what is happening around me." [Nora Gallagher] and to quite simply understand that God is indeed part of my 'everydayness.'

Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book,  An Altar in the World,  "What is saving my life now... is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.  My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. [I ignore distinctions between secular and sacred, physical and spiritual, the body and the soul]  What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world... In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life... Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it."

Yesterday evening I took my coffee out to sit quietly in the cool damp of the evening. It was silent and it was windy.  As I was looking at my sweet peas, which I am growing in a pot on the gazebo porch beside my 'relaxing chair', my eyes gradually focused in on a beautiful green and brown dragonfly which seemed to be 'hanging on for dear life' as the wind buffeted the vines on the rather flimsy climbing strings.  In a moment of silence, of wonder, I paused -  before running for my camera to capture this beautifully exquisite creature in a photo!