Where I can enjoy waiting

(A guest post by Steve Schuler for this sixth day of Lent).


Home is where I can enjoy waiting.

Dial-up internet was a blessing in disguise. As a poor graduate student working at home, I found myself waiting in front of the computer screen for half a minute each time a page loaded. I wished the wait-time were either shorter or longer. If it were longer, I could at least read a couple pages of a book in the interim. But the wait time was just short enough to be annoying. One day I noticed that my wife had left her Irish tin whistle on the desk. So as I waited for a page to load, I picked it up and blew a couple notes. The instrument was simple enough, having just six holes to master. Soon I found myself sitting in front of the computer with the tin whistle and an old hymnal, playing one or two verses while I waited for each page to load.

That was the beginning of my realization that home is a place where I can enjoy waiting.

In my own house, if I am waiting for a telephone call or for a pot to boil, I can walk over to my workbench and sharpen a dull tool, or I can pick up a magazine and finish reading an article I had put aside. There’s no pressure to do such things. They are merely available to me whenever I have a few spare moments. While waiting for my children to get shoes or jackets on, I can pull a weed or two in the yard, or I can sit on the steps and admire the trees across the street.

In my office, when I am waiting to leave for the classroom or waiting to be picked up if my wife has the car, I can organize papers or browse through book reviews to see what I might like to order for the library. I can also brew a fresh cup of coffee, put my feet up on a chair, and and just think. At my parents’ house, which is not the house I grew up in, I can wait without pressure. I can always flip through one an old photo album, or in fine weather I can simply lie on my back in the grass and watch the sky.

My oldest daughter waiting in the yard.

In places I call home, I can wait without agitation or anxiety. That’s not to say I always do wait patiently at home, but patience is usually easier at home than it is elsewhere. At home, it is always possible to enjoy waiting.

Naturally, there are places in which waiting is sheer tedium—in the checkout line, in the mechanic’s waiting room, in the dentist’s chair. Such experiences can be endured, but not enjoyed. I may have brought a book to read or have found an interesting person with whom to chat, but these are diversions from the otherwise unpleasant experience of waiting away from home. There are also places where I do not (yet) feel at home, such as the homes of some relatives, or my church building. When I have to wait in these places, there is something of an aimless vacancy, a suspension of mental activity, that seems inevitable even if I have a means to occupy myself. Waiting in such places is not unpleasant, and I may even be relatively comfortable, but it is hard not to become agitated while waiting, though I am hard pressed to say exactly why.

Good things come of waiting at home. I have kept abreast of books being published in my field, my front yard has gotten weeded, most of my edge tools have remained sharp, and I eventually progressed from the tin whistle to the tenor recorder and have become competent enough to accompany my wife and father in recorder trios playing Handel and Bach.

Steve Schuler lives with his wife and children in southern Alabama, and he is an English professor at the University of Mobile. 

In Transit

If I didn't know better, I would think the transportation industry has some sort of conspiracy to throw my travel plans off schedule.  I left my hotel before five o'clock this morning, only to find at the airport that my flight (scheduled to depart at half past six) would be delayd by two hours. However, today's delay is far less stressful than my long and strange day waiting for the train at Christmas.  In fact, I'm rather thankful for the respite. This has been a whirlwind week and a whirlwind month, and I have had very little time to reflect on the wind and the flurry.

Last week I submitted my full dissertation to my committee.  Next week (on Ash Wednesday, in fact), my committee and I will meet for my oral defense of the dissertation. This week I traveled for an on-campus job interview for a very exciting position.

Written out, those words seem small, but each event is the culmination of months and years of work and waiting. I can hardly believe that only the oral defense remains. I am exhausted and bewildered and thrilled.  Even as I sit here in a Gulf-Coast airport, I'm not troubled by the uncertain schedule. Travel disruptions in December became an emblem for the waiting that seemed to characterize every area of my life. Today, this delay gives me time to pause, drink a cup of tea, and remember that I am headed home in more ways than one.

What are you doing on this early Friday morning?

Waiting my Way Home

"Ben, you're my last hope," the station agent said into the phone. "You see, I've got this passenger who needs to get to Ft. Worth and--oh. You're in San Antonio? Oh, never mind, then."

After five hours of waiting for a train, this was not what I wanted to hear from the Amtrak station agent. My northbound coach, the Texas Eagle, was schedule to depart from McGregor at 11:50 AM on Sunday, but an accident north of Austin had led to a series of delays. All the passengers who had been on the train were loaded onto buses, and train service was to resume in Ft. Worth. After a series of frustrating conversations with operators, who seemed to know about as much as I did about what was happening, I finally learned that one of the five buses knew I was waiting in McGregor and would be coming to take me to Ft. Worth.

Waiting for another train, July 2007

By 5 o'clock, however, the station agent was beginning to worry that the bus had either forgotten me or was not going to arrive in time to get me to Ft. Worth.  Just before he called Ben, I had overheard him say as much to Maria, the station agent at Temple, Texas. "Do you know where he is?" my agent asked. "No, I can't hail Billings, either." The inability to "hail Billings"--the driver of the bus that was supposed to come for me--had become the last in long series of obstacles to my journey home for Christmas.

I should pause here to note that my wonderful, amazing, patient housemates had been waiting with me all afternoon, and when Jennifer realized that Billings-the-bus-driver was incommunicado, and that Ben-the-taxi-man was in San Antonio, she said, "Could we take her to Ft. Worth?"
"Could you?" the agent replied, relief visible on his face. "That would be best, because we just can't seem to hail Billings....and Amtrak could reimburse you for the gas."
"Okay. We'll do it. When would we need to leave?"
"Well, um, right now."

And so Grant and Jenn, who had originally planned to wait with me for fifteen minutes, drove me two hours to Ft. Worth, arriving about ten minutes before the northbound train pulled out of the station.  The generosity, patience, and love they exhibited was more than I could have asked for, and they, bless them, didn't even make me ask. They simply saw my need and met it without fuss or fear.

At the beginning of Advent, I wrote about how I have found it difficult to be faithful in waiting (read the full reflection here). Writing that entry humbled me because for most of my life I have thought of myself as being fairly good at waiting. In college, I liked to quip, "Delayed gratification is good for the soul," too often dismissing my friend Rachel's protest: "Yes, but it is hard on the heart."

My long day at the train station reminded me that waiting is much easier to bear with friends. This is hardly an original observation, but it is a truth that has come to dwell with me this year. Often, people describe life as a journey, and friends as our companions on the road. It is wonderful to have friends travel alongside me, but in some ways I am more encouraged when I realize that my friends are waiting with me as circumstances, sickness, or uncertainty stand in the way of progress.

And so tonight, safe and warm in my childhood home, I am thankful for Grant and Jenn, who waited with me all day, hugged me when it looked like I might not get home at all, then took action as soon as they saw a way to speed me on my journey.

I am also thankful for all the memories of other friends who have waited with me. I remember the spring I was preparing for my preliminary exams, when Adrienne would  come over and study with me, to help me stay calm and hopeful. Steph stayed up with me all night as I graded a mountain of essays and exams. And then there was that wonderful piece of pie Liz brought to the library during my second year of grad school. I was working frantically to finish a term paper, and she came and sat with me until the wee hours of the morning. In college, I once became sick on a night my friends and I had planned to cook dinner and watch a movie. They put me to bed upstairs, and whenever I would wake, one friend or another--first Rachel, then Keith, Mari, or Mark--would be sitting across the room, waiting quietly in case I might wake and need something.

As a single adult, I do not expect anyone to wait with me for a train to come or for a night to pass. No one is obligated to tend me if I am sick, to drive me to Ft. Worth, or to keep me company if I must work late into the night. Consequently, whenever a friend does wait with me, I know their waiting is a form of grace. When they wait, they say, "We believe this will end -- we believe you will get home, you will finish this essay, you will be well again."  But they also say--and this is such a gracious mystery--"This moment is good, too. "

At Advent, and during all our  seasons of waiting, we need such friends. Their presence reminds us that our savior's name is "Emmanuel"--God with us.

A Season of Waiting

I have been dreading Christmas this year.  My eight-year-old self would be horrified at such blasphemy; my twenty-eight-year-old self is certainly not pleased to admit how grimly I have watched December's approach.  Ever since I can remember, I have exulted in the approach of the Christmas season. Beginning in kindergarten, I began recording Christmas "radio" shows, complete with carols, special guests, and thrilling dramas about motorcycle gangs (yes: motorcycle gangs. Don't ask me why.).

Living on an academic calendar my entire life only enhanced the inherent joys of Christmas. Before I started school, Christmas marked the season when my parents' lives calmed down for several weeks, and once I entered school, the holiday break provided long and blissful days for listening to Orson Wells narrate A Christmas Carol or hosting Christmas tea parties.

Even grad school, so often an enemy to comfort and joy, has never before jeopardized Christmas. I have endured many sleepless nights finishing seminar papers or grading exams, but by the time Christmas itself comes, I have always been able to leave my work alone for a week or two, at least. Christmas has represented a clean break between semesters.

Why, then, has this year's holiday filled with me such reluctance, even dread? Because for once, I cannot pretend that Christmas is my reward for a semester of superhuman activity. Certainly, I have been working hard--painfully hard, unceasingly hard--on teaching, my dissertation, and job applications. My dissertation is coming along well, but job applications have unsettled me far more than I expected.  Whenever anyone asks me how the process is going, I hear a sanguine voice say something about "exciting prospects" and "trusting God," but somehow I don't sound so chipper when talking to myself. I have sent out more than twenty applications, and now I must wait. Many preliminary interviews for academic positions occur at national Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention at the beginning of January, and not knowing whether or not I will have an interview has been overshadowing my eagerness for Christmas.

Waiting for news about interviews reminds me how many other things I am tired of waiting for: I am tired of waiting for a job that does not require every waking moment, for some sense of where I will be at this time next year, for reconciliation with a friend. 

Always waiting

 Only this week have I recognized the root of my discontent: I refuse to welcome Christmas--the feast of the Incarnation--because I am sick of waiting.  I do not want Christmas to come because I am not ready: I have not worked hard enough, it seems, to earn a fruitful and peaceful Christmas vacation.

Despite my reluctance, I began my traditional holiday reading on Sunday--selections from Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. The voices the editors of this book gather--from Bonhoeffer, Donne, Hopkins, L'Engle, Romero, and many more--have been my guides toward Christmas for years. Last night, the reading was from Henri Nouwen, and his words made me ashamed of my selfish impatience. After observing that waiting is a very unpopular attitude in our culture, Nouwen writes

...waiting is even more difficult because we are so fearful. One of the most pervasive emotions in the atmosphere around us is fear. [...] Fearful people have a hard time waiting, because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are. [...] It impresses me, therefore, that all the figures who appear on the first pages of Luke's Gospel are wiating. Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting. Mary is waiting. Simeon and Anna, who were there at the temple when Jesus was brought in, are waiting. The whole opening scene of the good news is filled with waiting people. And right at the beginning all those people in some way or another hear the words, "Do not be afraid. I have something good to say to you." These words set the tone and the context. Now Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon and Anna are waiting for something new and good to happen to them. (27-29)

This time before Christmas, Advent, calls God's people to wait. Simeon and Anna did not look forward to the coming of the Messiah as something they could accomplish, but as something they waited for God to do. Their role was to wait faithfully and watch carefully, doing the work before them.

I am faithless if I let my own impatience and anxiety deprive me of the joy that comes with Christmas. So I am waiting. So my future is uncertain. So I may not have done "enough." The Word of the Lord has come to dwell among us, and that Word says, "Do not be afraid. Good is coming." Maybe in my life that good will take the form of news about a job interview. Maybe not. Regardless, Nouwen and other messengers-of-the-most-High challenge me to wait in hope, and when Christmas comes, I will remember that this hope is about much, much more than my job prospects or a vacation from school. Freedom from selfishness, salvation from fear, the redemption of all creation--these are hopes much better than anything the MLA could offer.

Making it Home: To Be Still

I often feel that I'm spending my days building a life, a home, and waiting for others to come join me.  This song, by Alela Diane, is the song I play when I feel this way. I open the window wide, sing along, and hope all the friends and strangers outside can hear.  

Have you been wearing holes in your boots out there?

Have you been kicking bones in the desert sand?

There's a wolf inside the cave and another in the clouds.

I've seen them chewing on, on the shadows in your eyes.

And it's here at home I wait for your wanders to be still.

Oh it's here at home I wait for your wanders to be still.

from "To Be Still" by Alela Diana