Waiting

A ‘Thought for the Day’ for Black Cat Radio – 31st October 2020

By the time you hear this I will have the final results of a degree I’ve been doing as an allegedly mature student. Now, though, I’m still waiting for them to come out. There’s a lot of waiting now for all of us. We’re waiting for an end to the pandemic. We’re waiting to see what will happen about Christmas. We’re waiting to see what the economic effects are going be. We’re waiting for a vaccine. Some are waiting for Covid test results. And all this is quite apart from any other waiting we might have to do. We might be waiting for an operation or to hear if we’ve got a job. We might be waiting to see someone again who we haven’t seen for a long time. There are all sorts of things we have to hang around for.

Waiting often suggests a kind of passive, helpless time. It can suggest that we can’t do anything but see what fate has in store for us. And being told to wait can be very annoying, as well. What choice do we have, after all? But a Dutch Catholic priest and writer called Henri Nouwen suggests a different way of waiting, called active waiting. This means remembering that what we’re waiting for is growing up right now, like a plant, even if it’s still a seed hidden underground right now. Then we can wait with hope, knowing that what we’re waiting for is working to burst into our lives and change things. And as we wait, we can take a mindful approach of noticing what’s going on and looking out for the first signs that things are changing.

So, I’m going to try this and see if waiting can be not so bad after all, and perhaps you might like to join me?

Take care

Mel