A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3)

What is it like when you are getting ready for someone to come?  How do you prepare, say, for guests? You might clean the house and go to the grocery store and prepare food and sweep the sidewalk or the porch.  Then what?

You wait for the guests to arrive. 

And once you begin waiting, there is a change in your position relative to the guests: you are no longer the one in control.  Who is in control?  The ones you are waiting for.  You can make phone calls (Where are you? I’m waiting!), send a text, complain to the neighbors —but you can’t make the arrival happen.  The guests may get here on time, or early, or late – or not at all.  All you can do is wait for them to show up.

Your time no longer belongs to you, but to the one who is coming.  This is true whether you are waiting for guests or simply to board a plane; whether waiting in a doctor’s office, or waiting for the plumber to come.  It is true when we are waiting for an elevator or for the pedestrian walk signal at an intersection (perhaps pushing the button over and over, even though we know it doesn’t do any good).

There is a helplessness involved in waiting.  And we generally don’t like it when we’re not in control.  But how we want to be in control!  How we detest having to wait, powerless to hurry things along.

If we can’t control guests or elevators or walk signals, even less can we control the coming of God.  Waiting for God brings us into a sacred darkness and helplessness.  If we are really waiting, if we have truly accepted to wait, we have let go of our need to control and have acknowledged the sovereignty of God.  This is a helplessness that can be thought of as falling into the hands of God.  When we choose to wait with our whole being, we slip into God’s time, rather than the illusory time we think is our own.

Fr. Pedro Arrupe was a saintly Jesuit, the superior general of the Society of Jesus for eighteen years.  In 1981 Fr. Arrupe suffered a massive stroke which left him virtually helpless.  These are words that he wrote to the General Congregation in 1983:

More than ever, I now find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life, from my youth. And this is still the one thing I want. But now there is a difference: the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in his hands.

The “initiative is entirely with God,” he said.  The acceptance, though, was Father Arrupe’s.  He now had control of almost nothing except for that holy assent.  He lived for ten years in this helplessness.

So in our own waiting, too, in our human helplessness to hurry God along or to save ourselves or to control God in any way—this helplessness can be the occasion of a holy acceptance, a holy giving over of ourselves into the hand of God.

But our helplessness is not hopelessness, because God comes.  Christ always comes.  And the hand of God is the very best place to wait, no matter what else is going on in our lives.  Christ is always coming, yet always with us. We wait for God in God.  We wait for the Christ who is already here waiting for us.  We wait for the transformation of all things, trusting, as Karl Rahner says to God, “that the heart of all things is already transformed, because you have taken them all to your heart.”

Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him.  (Psalm 37:7 KJV)

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Shepherd drawing by Rose Hoover, rc.

Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions… Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusion, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.

Notice that here the truth is actively moving toward us, not elusive or fleeing us, and using our own questions as a means of reaching us.  If this is true, then people who tell us not to ask questions may be hindering our way to God, who is Truth. (Of course, for the questions themselves to become a path for divine Truth, we must make sure they are real questions, and not defiant certainties disguised as questions.)

The image of truth walking toward us is faithful to what we know of our God, who actively pursues us – who seeks us, even when we least deserve to be found.

We can also be confident that in our unknowing, before the questions are answered, we are already in God the All-Knowing.  We can sit quietly even in our darkness and confusion, trusting that we remain in God.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.

Hosea 11:3-4

Two years ago, with the help of Sister Elizabeth, the county housing authority, and a number of generous people, Carol — the mentally ill homeless woman about whom I have written before — finally moved into her own apartment.  One day shortly before Christmas we drove her to sign forms and take care of assorted bits of red tape.  The real estate agent is a compassionate woman who treated Carol with the same courtesy that she would have shown a millionaire.  She took obvious delight in handing over to her the key to the apartment.

Stopping for lunch

After leaving the real estate office, we stopped for lunch at a fast-food restaurant. Carol was too excited to sit still and eat.  She half-danced among the tables, raising her hands and praising Jesus for all to hear.

A woman working there asked if we were from a church group.  I told her that we were Catholic Sisters, and she asked if we were from Saint Augustine parish.  I replied that we do indeed attend Saint Augustine .

“I’m Lulu,” she told me. “I’m on work release.”

“Good for you!” I replied, not knowing what the proper response would be, as being on work-release meant that her place of residence at the moment was prison.  (Should I have said, “Oh, I’m so sorry”?  Or simply, “Oh…”?  On second thought I decided that “Good for you” was appropriate after all, because she is working hard to prove herself a responsible citizen and to take her place in the community.)

“I’d like to be going to Saint Augustine’s,” she added.

“I’ll hope to see you there one day,” I said. And we agreed to pray for each other.

After lunch, Sister Elizabeth, Carol (key in hand), and I headed for Carol’s new home.  In the car she was singing,

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
it is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.

Moving in was uncomplicated, as she had few belongings.  Though devoid of furniture, the apartment was warm and clean, with a real bathroom, and a kitchen to prepare the food that she buys with food stamps.

However, while Carol is streetwise, she is not house-wise.  She does not know some of the simplest things most of us take for granted.  She has to be taught the necessity of putting the garbage can out at the curb on the designated day.  Or that you don’t turn the thermostat up as high as it will go to warm the apartment, then turn on the air conditioning when it heats up too much — unless you want to run up a bill impossible to pay and have your electricity turned off.

Getting there in spite of ourselves

Those of us who have been more fortunate than Carol and Lulu — in our parents, in our economic situation, in our mental or physical health — are not for all that closer to the reign of God.  Neither are we more worthy of the Christ who comes, just because we have never been in jail or in need of food and shelter.  All is gift for each of us, including what we imagine we have merited.  We have not earned the good things in our lives any more than Lulu, who is for the moment not even free to come and go as she pleases – or than Carol, who must be approved for SSI if she is to stay in her new lodging.

This is how the British poet U. A. Fanthorpe describes the events surrounding Jesus’ birth:

… a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

“BC:AD,” Christmas Poems
(Enitharmon Press, 2003)

Are we not walking haphazard into the kingdom of heaven along with Carol, Lulu, shepherds, Magi, and the kind real estate agent?  Or, to borrow the words of Paul Simon, are we not all more or less “bouncing into Graceland”? There is no AAA TripTik to show us ahead of time each step of the journey, and most of us do meander, sometimes on track and sometimes off.

If we are really paying attention, we will be struck with wonder at finding ourselves there in spite of ourselves.

We may be walking beneath a starlight that seems no different from yesterday’s light, in a world where war still rages, where the hand of oppression lies heavy on the poor, and where earthquakes and hurricanes and mental illness leave ordinary people homeless.  What has changed, we say?  The grip of evil is still unbearably strong.

Nevertheless, through all the sorrows and joys and anxieties and tedium of our lives, we are bouncing into graceland.  Held by a hand stronger than sorrow and evil, we stumble into the kingdom of God.

And unlike the shepherds and the three wise men, we know how the story ends.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

(Matthew 5:3)

Rembrandt, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’

But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans,and have prevailed.’

Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’

And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

(Genesis 32:24-31 RSV)

Do you wrestle with God?

The Bible offers notable examples of wrestlers, for wrestling with God is not uncommon in life. But the most obvious wrestler is Jacob. We are told in Genesis that on a night when Jacob feared for his life, “a man” wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob, however, was aware of having fought with more than a human being, for after the struggle was over, he said, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

At least two important things can happen when we wrestle.

1. An unexpected transformation

All night Jacob has been struggling. We read that that Jacob “prevailed” in this combat. But the old Jacob does not prevail.

Alone with God, Jacob is asked his name. Why? Surely God knows who he is.

Sister Elizabeth says that God wanted Jacob to acknowledge himself as the cheater. Remember that he had cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright and out of the paternal blessing as the first-born. Now, as dawn breaks, Jacob can no longer hide behind a disguise; he can no longer obtain what he wants by guile. Back then, when his blind father asked who he was, he had said, “I am Esau” (Genesis 27). Now Jacob must admit who he is. He has to face himself and face God directly.

Through his struggle, Jacob is transformed. “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel.” He has survived, not as his former self, but as someone resembling more closely the person God is calling him to be.

2. A defeat which is in truth a victory.

Notice what an intimate activity wrestling is, unlike other forms of fighting: boxing, for example, or modern warfare, where one can kill from a distance without even seeing the other. In wrestling, not only do you see your opponent, not only do you make contact, but the two of you might almost appear to be embracing, as in the Rembrandt painting above.

What is more, in this photo by Dreier Carr the two wrestlers are so entwined that it is difficult to distinguish to whom the arms and legs belong.

Dreier Carr, "Two High School Students Wrestling" (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Licence)

What shall we do in a match as intimate as this, when like Jacob we have been wrestling all night, and perhaps all day or all year as well? What shall we do when all the wrestling arms and legs and hearts and minds are scrambled and seem just a part of oneself; when God is so tangled up in our life that we wonder if God is there at all or if we were just imagining a divine Other involved in the combat? What is to be our response when we are so woven together with God that we can’t tell where we end and God begins?

This is not the time to push for a conquest. Neither is it the time to disengage.

Now is the time to sink into God in a blessed defeat which is the only victory worth winning — and to walk like Jacob into the future, limping perhaps, but graced by God.

Isn’t it the great tragedy, when one wrestles with God,
not to be defeated?
N’est-ce pas le grand malheur, quand on lutte contre Dieu,
de n’être pas vaincu?

Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce (Gravity and Grace)

Many years ago, a colleague of my father’s found an abandoned baby buzzard (a turkey vulture, to be exact), took him home, and named him Oscar. Cared for with tenderness, Oscar grew up and learned to fly. During the day he would go out and socialize with other buzzards, but he would always come home again every afternoon.

Bereft of a mother, however, Oscar had never learned an essential trick of buzzardhood — to lock his wings in a dihedral angle so as to soar on the warm air currents. While the other turkey vultures were lazily gliding, poor Oscar was flapping and flapping, working hard to stay aloft. By the time he returned home, he was exhausted.

This went on for some time, Oscar going out every day, flap-flapping to keep up with the others, and coming home worn out, until one day — he got it. Oscar finally learned what most of his vulture companions had known from youth, to fix his wings at the proper angle and simply soar. He was so ecstatic at this discovery that he stayed out for hours, soaring and gliding, catching the updrafts of the earth-warmed air.

Like Oscar, we often work unnecessarily hard just to keep aloft. We battle to succeed, we strain to make people like us, and in the realm of faith we struggle to lift ourselves to God. In the long run what we really need to do is learn to be still and rest on the currents of God’s love.

Someone who knew this was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a remarkable woman, an artist, scientist, musician, writer, and composer. If anyone could rely on her own resources, it would seem to have been Hildegard. Nevertheless, she was aware that it was not her own flapping that would allow her to soar, and she described herself as “a feather on the breath of God.”

Our own efforts amount to nothing unless we are borne by the Spirit of God who breathes in us, surrounds us, supports us, and raises us up.

I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a child quieted at its mother’s breast;
like a child that is quieted is my soul.
(Psalm 131:2 RSV)

“Should we call ahead and make a reservation?” we asked each other. We finally decided that with several motels in Waycross, which is not exactly the tourist capital of the Southeast, it was more than likely that vacancies would be a dime a dozen.

We arrived in Waycross about 7:00 p.m., and the first motel we approached simply waved us away with no explanation. At the second one we were told that everything in town was booked, with the possible exception of one suspiciously timeworn place.

“Why,” I asked, “are all the motel rooms in Waycross, Georgia, filled on a Tuesday night?”

It appeared that there was some sort of housing convention going on. Who would have thought?

The two employees at the desk asked if we would like them to call ahead and make a reservation for us in a nearby town.

“Where would you suggest?”

Two small towns were mentioned, and we settled on Jesup, which turned out to be not so near at all — about an hour away from Waycross and on a different highway from the one on which we had come. By this time Sister Elizabeth and I were both tired, but off we went toward Jesup, trying to look on the positive side of events.

Between Waycross and Jesup we glimpsed a small sign on the left side of the road. “CHAMPION TURKEY OAK,” it read, with an arrow pointing to the left. What was a turkey oak? I made a vague resolution to check it out.

To make a long story short, we arrived in Jesup, where the motel was spotlessly clean, where lights had been turned on to welcome us, where the small staff was exceptionally caring, where we tumbled into our beds exhausted, and where the next morning we had a complementary breakfast better than any I’ve ever eaten in a motel.

On the road again, backtracking toward Waycross and the Okefenokee, we passed through a town called Screven. There we saw the sign pointing toward the champion turkey oak, so we made a sharp turn in the direction of the arrow.

However, after proceeding for some way, no turkey oak was to be found (assuming we would have recognized one had we seen it), so we stopped to ask directions from an elderly woman coming out of a school building. We headed off again, soon to find ourselves wandering fruitlessly around the quiet streets of Screven.

As we were beginning to despair of finding the turkey oak, along came a car which to our surprise turned out to be driven by the woman we had met outside the school. Having realized that she had given us the wrong directions, she had chased us down. She called out, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll lead you to the turkey oak” — which she did.

It was not a beautiful tree, although it is the largest of its kind in the country. Nevertheless we were duly impressed and took pictures to record the event. (Later we learned that this tree is called a turkey oak because its leaves resemble a turkey’s foot.)

The night before, we had been sure that not calling ahead to make a motel reservation had been a mistake. We had traveled more than two hours out of the way by the time we finally got to the Okefenokee. But despite everything, I am certain that we were on the right road.

In Jesup, we had the consolation of tender loving care by the operators of the motel, and they had the consolation of providing that care for us and receiving our gratitude. The Screven resident had the consolation of showing us kindness beyond the call of duty, and we had the consolation of receiving her kindness. What was bestowed on us was of far greater value than the ordinary comfort of stopping early in the evening without fatigue and without incident.

It is important not to forget moments like this: occasions when we seem to be off course, only to discover that we are just where we were meant to be. Perhaps we had been on the right road all along. Or perhaps we really had made a mess of things, and God, always eager to do good for us, transformed what could well have been a road fraught with peril into a path radiant with grace. Those who have eyes to see, let them see.

Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? (Mark 8:18)

“Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.” (Ps. 91:9-10)

Really? If we look around us, God doesn’t seem to take very good care of the faithful. I used to be angry at God because of this — and fearful as well. After all, devout Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists: any of us may be in a terrible accident or lose loved ones or get cancer and die. Why does God even bother to promise protection?

Then just a few months ago, when I was helping a family member who had been ill, and was consequently plunged into the mystery of human diminishment, something was illuminated for me. Driving along, exhausted and discouraged, I heard on the car radio the old hymn, “It is well, it is well with my soul.” And I realized that, yes, God’s promise to protect us is trustworthy. Because I am enveloped in mercy, it is indeed well with what is most truly me, well with my loved ones in what is most truly each of them. What is most truly each of us is safeguarded no matter what happens to us in life. (Of course I might persistently and ultimately choose destruction — but I suspect this is hard to do, since God is there to forgive and pick up the pieces and to protect the real me from myself if I am the least bit open to the divine.)

“You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,” says the psalm, for God will command angels “to guard you in all your ways.” Terrible things may happen, I may be wounded grievously, I may bear the scars of emotional hurts — but the most precious core of my being is safe under God’s wings.

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge. (Psalm 91:3-4a)

Isn’t this often the way we are with God? “I’m going to set you free,” says God, holding us tight. “I’m going to set you free from old, less mature ways of being that are hindering your growth in my love.”
“But I don’t want to be free!” we exclaim, afraid to lose what we know, afraid of being left with nothing.
Nevertheless God gives us a push and off we go. Amazing! We wobble, we have moments of panic — but occasionally we soar! Of course, God has never left us and is right there beside us in case we do fall, which we sometimes do. And even when God gives us a push toward greater freedom, God never, ever, lets go of us.

For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Do not fear, I will help you.”
(Isaiah 41:13)

The article deals not only with traditional human views of suffering and the question of God’s relation to human suffering, but also with the faith of the Guthrie family and the other members of their church. One of these supportive friends, Wayne Buchanan, is quoted as saying that “we will go down with the ship, believing in our hearts that God is in control.”

This quote has come back to me during the illness of one of our sisters. Although we know that God does not desire pain for us, still we have to believe that God is ultimately in control. The Resurrection of Jesus shows us this. Our own experience of letting God bring good out of painful events shows us this. The beauty and mystery glimpsed from time to time amid distress also show us this. No matter what happens, we are never out of the hand of our loving God.

The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
(Deuteronomy 33:27, RSV)