Advent Thoughts - Waiting
On the beach in Hervey Bay, Queensland, a pelican watches a fisherman with eager anticipation. He needs nourishment and hopes to find it here on the beach as he watches each fish being gutted and the waste put on one side.
There is a time of waiting, of watching and hoping, but eventually a tiny fish is thrown into the air. The pelican's patience is about to be rewarded.
The looked-for nourishment comes and the pelican is ready to receive it.
Human beings too need nourishment, not only for their bodies, but also for their minds, hearts and souls. Advent invites us to seek this sustenance in the process of waiting. It’s a time when Christians prepare themselves to celebrate the event which was the fulfilment of the patience of centuries. We identify with God’s people in the Old Testament who watched and hoped, ignorant of the form the nourishment would take but knowing where to look for it.
The thoughts on this site this advent are designed to help us to wait in that same place, looking longingly at God, and believing that the waiting will be rewarded in our lives as it was in history. And, like the pelican, to be ready to receive the nourishment when it comes.
Nasir discovered he was HIV positive in 1990. By February 1991, he was suffering from fatigue, bizarre pains in his bones, severe headaches, diarrhoea, and large spots all over his body. "The doctors started really hounding me then," he says sadly. "I was treated very badly. Doctors called me names and made jokes about me. They also told me that I should wear a card around my neck warning people I had HIV. The worst was when a doctor leaked my story to the press to 'warn' people in my community about me. We were stopped by journalists and my wife and children were photographed as they went to the market and school ….After my story was in the newspapers I became a recluse. I wanted to die."
Nasir bought a bicycle repair business in his home city of Lahore in Pakistan. "I had a lot of trouble from the other businessmen in my street. They would come and confront me about being HIV-positive and some even told me to go away." It was difficult getting customers as well. People were told to boycott his shop. Many did so out of fear or ignorance.
After a couple of years of hardship, however, Nasir's life took a turn for the better. Following a visit from a Catholic brother, Nasir joined a special help group for people living with HIV/AIDS. In due course he formed his own New Light support group. Nasir employs three field workers and a part-time doctor. Families affected by HIV and AIDS are given food rations, medical supplies, and help with children's school fees. “Slowly I see attitudes changing. People are now shaking my hand, people who only a year ago would cross the street if I walked towards them."
Last Friday was World Aids Day
. We were encouraged to accept that it was "you, me, us" who need to act in response to the spread of the endemic.. Time is bringing a change of attitudes but there are times when simply waiting for that to happen is not enough. We all need to challenge stigma and discrimination and have the patience to keep up the struggle. Nasir and others who are HIV positive may wait a long time before all prejudice about the illness has been overcome but let’s be grateful mean time for those like him, you, me, us, who have the courage to go on working....as well as waiting.
Recently, for an experimental week, a cat could tune in to its favourite programme for the purrfect end to the day. Pet TV was a service provided on BBC digital television. It consisted of a looped series of images and sounds, including clips of rolling snooker balls, flying Frisbees and cartoon characters such as Top Cat.
It was an attempt, said the BBC, to find out what sort of television programmes, sounds and images animals respond to, so pets were under the microscope. Do they pick up messages from TV? Do they respond to dogs barking or wolves howling or parrots talking? Does the sound of running water attract fish to the screen, or the sight of fish swimming around a tank attract a cat? There was even the chance to put your pet through one of six IQ tests on the BBC website. So it was wise not to let your pet get too excited. Just when your goldfish thought it could put its tail up and swish on the TV for a bit of R and R, its boss was watching and it was expected to think.
Animals may not really need rest but human beings certainly do need time when no demands are made on them at all. Our daily lives are full of the pressure to perform well, to think clearly and to cooperate with others. Opportunities for the kind of relaxation which requires nothing of us at all give an appropriate balance to busy lives. "Waiting around" has a negative feel about it as if all our time should be spent doing something purposeful. Watching mindless TV may not be everybody’s way of doing it but it is one of a number of valuable ways of waiting for, and doing, absolutely nothing.
The number of skylarks in the UK is rapidly diminishing but an unexpected solution has emerged. If a small uncultivated space is left at the centre of fields being planted with cereal crops, the songsters begin to thrive again. Now the government is offering financial incentives to farmers who when they plant for next year will create such fallow areas.
Human beings also benefit from having a fallow area, a restful space at the heart of their lives. The busy-ness which occupies us can take over if we don’t allow ourselves opportunities for the kind of quiet reflectiveness which puts us in touch with the stillness at our centre. We need waiting time and often need to be quite disciplined about making time to reconnect with that inner place.
In the image offered to us by the skylarks, the field’s crop does not profit from the space at its centre, though research has shown that leaving an unsown area doesn’t cause the yield to decrease. It is the skylarks who benefit. Perhaps today, if we need some encouragement to re-discover our quiet centre, it might come from realising that we are not the only ones whose lives will be enhanced. Those who come into regular contact with us might also find they’re able to sing the song in their lives with greater enthusiasm and vigour.
For years, ninety-five-year-old Jessie Smart has been knitting scarves – more than 100 of them last year. They are sold at the Christmas fayre at her Care home and she’s raised hundreds of pounds. Mrs Smart prefers to do something active and of benefit to others to sitting doing nothing.
But for a woman who came to see the late Archbishop Anthony Bloom, knitting served a different purpose. She wanted help in perceiving God’s presence
. He gave her instructions including that she mustn’t utter a word of prayer and should have her knitting needles handy. Later she came to see him and he asked what had happened.
“I did just what you advised me to do. I put my room right, made sure there was nothing in it that would worry me, and then settled in my armchair and thought, “I have fifteen minutes during which I can do nothing without being guilty!”. I looked around and thought “Goodness what a nice room I live in”. I felt so quiet because the room was so peaceful. There was a clock ticking but it didn’t disturb the silence, its ticking just underlined the fact that everything was so still and after a while I remembered that you told me to knit before the face of God, and so I began to knit. And I became more and more aware of the silence. The needles hit the armrests of my chair, the clock was ticking so peacefully, there was nothing to bother about, I had no need of straining myself, and then I perceived that this silence was not the absence of something but the presence of something. The silence had a density, a richness, and it began to pervade me. The silence around began to come and meet the silence in me. All of a sudden I perceived that the silence was a presence. At the heart of the silence there was Him who is all stillness, all peace, all poise”
The need to be doing something purposeful is powerful in most of us. Sometimes, though, it’s healthy to have times of just being still, or at least of occupying our bodies with something we do without thinking. Such waiting often remains just that, but occasionally it creates awareness of more important things than busy-ness.
