“ I remember exasperating my piano teacher(s) as a child by flying through Chopin at breakneck speed, ignoring rests and fermatas in furious pursuit of fini. I knew the notes but they never sounded very musical when I finished them. I learned later from a maestro counseling his orchestra, “The music is in between the notes.” Faith, like music, needs rest. After all it started in a womb, and there is no such thing as instant incubation. Americans have pronounced a pox on waiting. Yet Sabbaths punctuate the Godbearing life. Godbearers live through Advents and dark nights of the soul in which Jesus tells us: “Sit here while I pray.”” (Kenda Creasy Dean; The Godbearing Life)
Do you know what it is like to wake in the middle of the night, cheeks flushed from the perfect dream, to a room filled with silence? You are suspended between your multicolored dream and the opaque moonlight falling across the sheets. It is then, in that oddly lucid moment that you have to decide what is real. An invitation from God reads quite similarly.
An angel greets a teenage girl to tell her that she will conceive and bear the Son of God and savior of humanity… and then leaves her. Mary pondered all these things in her heart (Luke 2:19) but what choice did she have? The angel of the Lord did not stick around for dinner to flesh out any of the details or next steps in her calling. God, as salvation history would indicate, has a taste for lovin’ and leavin’ people. Not ultimately, of course, but for enough time that the Jewish and Christian people have learned to wait out the dry periods of their faith journey. Jesus promises his disciples that he will be “with them always” ( Matthew 28:20)and yet he cries out on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Not a particularly comforting example. Time and again, throughout scripture and my life as I read it, there is always an initial burst of excitement and affirmation for these divine callings, and then, the most peculiar quiet follows.
Since I’ve returned home and begun looking for meaningful, theologically-rich work, (to which I feel certainly called) I have found a few leads, but many more disappointments. People frequently share with me stories of how they prayed for the right job and sure enough, God provided, in a way more perfect than they could ever have imagined. “You have to trust that God has something in store for you,” they assure me. I am hungry enough for some kind of sign or opportunity that I easily heed their advice to pray about it. I pray all the time, ceaselessly actually. I pray while driving, mid-conversation, waiting in line, during mass and long walks around the neighborhood. It feels like I have been praying a very long time, and still, nothing.
I am trying to give God the benefit of the doubt. Trying to imagine some divine reason that will excuse the extended silence in my life, when it occurs to me that God not only works through signs and wonders, but most notoriously, in the desert. That is where God chooses to form nations, prophets, and even messiahs. We too often presume, as the above quote suggests, that because there is no visible action or dramatic turning points in our life that nothing is happening. When in reality this dry pause may be the most powerful months of spiritual gestation available.
The Church knows this, which is why I suspect, our liturgical calendar sets an ascetic preparation time before every period of celebration. Those forty days of fasting, almsgiving and prayer during Lent intensify the sweetness of Easter cake and chocolate, and in doing so, help us to relate more deeply to the joy of the Resurrection. We can know the glory of God, because we taste it more intensely upon Lenten lips.
When I really think about it, I see that all of the best gifts in life are preceded by significant waiting. It is exactly as the maestro says: “The music is in between the notes.” First dates would be nothing without the countless glances, restless wondering, and telephone pacing that precedes them. A simple meal is made delicious in the time it takes to glance down at the menu’s appetizing description, to smell the mixed aroma of food cooking and to feel the hunger sauce simmering in your stomach. A magical momentum builds in the time between wanting and acquiring. And if we are patient enough to dwell in this “not yet” moment, then perhaps God can work through our desiring.
I don’t think God’s sole intention is to “test” our patience or faithfulness, as many Christians have claimed. In fact, I cannot sit comfortably with the image of God testing me like an American Idol judge, exposing me to harsh circumstances so that I may prove my fidelity. These periods of stillness and waiting might instead be a courtship, or a sacred kind of foreplay that actually prepares us, from within the churning depths of our minds and hearts, to receive the gift ahead. What is really happening in this time of waiting and wondering remains a mystery to me. It is usually only in hindsight that we are able to name the gift or strength that God brought to birth in our waiting. If I knew what the heck was going on in my present life, I wouldn’t be so anxious, or questioning, or madly driven to write a blog about patience.
But if throughout history - personal and collective - we find that God speaks wisdom and direction by laboring in the finest details of our external and internal lives, and if our lives are meaningfully composed of anticipation and consummation, moderation and celebration, silent nights and angelic songs, than there really is no other way for the Holy Suitor to guide us than through the occasional stretch of silence and yes, questioning. Perhaps it is our hallowed space of incubation.
I am reminded to live in between the accentuated notes of my life, to dwell purposefully in the questions that surround the big clarifying moments, “to have patience with everything that is unresolved in [my] heart” (Rainer Maria Rilke) and life, because this is God’s courtship, and it is enacted through every suspended moment of my waiting and wondering.
thanks
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