We have just entered the Advent season of the Christian year, a time of waiting and preparing. This season is overlooked by many as the sales seasons jump right from Halloween to "Holiday Gift Purchasing" season.
Henri Nouwen describes spiritually oriented waiting as “openended.”
“Openended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something we wish to have… We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes… Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended.”
(H. Nouwen)
Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? (Tao Te Ching)
Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?
(Tao Te Ching)
“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 let go of wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations could happen to me… To wait openendedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life… The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
(H. Nouwen)
Simply Waiting
C_A_B
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