Waiting

"I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen."
Terry Temple Williams

Winter on the lake is quiet and still. When the air softens and the light changes I find myself listening and waiting for that glorious morning when the songbirds return. The music of their calls seems to bless the renewal of the sleeping woods. It isn't truly Spring until I hear their songs.

It's hard to wait, yet much of living requires it. We wait for children to form in the womb, for true love to blossom, for a new opportunity, for our bad haircut to grow out, for scary test results. In Christianity, Easter marks the end of a terrible three day wait when the disciples awake to the realization that the ministry of Jesus was more than they had ever imagined. At Passover, Jews remember the long night waiting for the Angel of Death to pass over their ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt. Muslims trace their origins back to Hagar waiting for God to intervene and rescue her and her infant son, Ishmael, after Abraham casts them out. All religions teach us waiting is a vital and holy ritual with lessons and gifts. When we acknowledge there are those things which despite all our innovations and grumpy impatience, will continue to have their own unalterable time frame, we increase our faith and trust in what we cannot control. Holy waiting means that whatever is needed for fruition, whether in thought or form, is not in our hands. It seems to imply that a very necessary ingredient is not yet available and will not be until time has reached a full point, outside of our knowledge and power, when it will. Perhaps this is meant to help us see there is a great richness in that space where we wait. Sitting with our anticipation or depending on the circumstances, our dread, creates room for contemplation, for prayer, for decision making, or 'Plan B' scenarios in case the results carry with them challenges. Each waiting invites communion with ourselves and with what is greater within us. In those holy moments we get a chance to finally get all things said or thought; to catch our breath more than once and in the silence that follows, listen for a voice deeper than our own.