For you I wait

READINGS How Long We Wait by Thomas Merton and Psalm 25:1-9

Recently, I have had more than one person ask me a different version of basically the same question. How are you deciding what to do right now? Or put another way, with all that is needed in this time where many things are unraveling both in the way of material infrastructure as well as civic and societal. What are you choosing to spend your time on? I think this is an important question because it requires us to be able to say both a real yes and a real no. It's about using the skill of discernment and being attentive to what comes. Having clarity about what to give our hearts to and what to decide is someone else's to do. And I think an overlooked spiritual ingredient is what I'm talking about today. Waiting as a spiritual practice. 

As some of you know, this congregation is in an exciting time, living into the process of implementing what came out of our strategic planning, guided by our leadership and the church building and loan fund. We did research, lots of meetings, and over the course of a weekend in June where many of you attended, we clarified what rose to the top as priorities for us and what calls to us now. It was visualized out over a million sticky notes and a million prayers and hopes. Where do we feel the most energy? Where do our gifts align with what is needed right now in our neighborhood, within our walls, and in Boulder County? It was striking to me that one of the questions that was asked at myriad turns was basically the same thing. What are we called to do right now? Of all that calls upon us, what are we good at? 

In my experiences, many people outside of churches think that we can do everything and all the things. And even church people, too, because we're filled with goodness and intentions to do good, but we can't. And often with that intention, we burn people out and don't have much of an impact. So we are asking another version of that same question. How do we decide what to do? What do we choose collectively to spend our time on? This too forces us to be able to say a real yes and a real no. 

And here's the other thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me. This kind of clarifying discernment needs us to at times wait with so much changing so fast and so much coming at us rapidly and so much that needs our donation, our volunteering, our signature, our presence. What if what is needed just as much as this is a spiritual pause, a holy waiting, intentional creation of a space between the information we have taken in and what we may or may not feel called to do. I know our impulses are good, but I fear we often miss the right answer when we shift too quickly to doing. 

Are you with me? 

What if our greater love is asking us to take a beat before thinking we know what to do? What if this moment asks us to call upon the discipline of spiritual waiting? As we have talked about in our justice work, the default impulse of those of us raised in the dominant American culture can often be to think what is needed for us is to lead the way to find a solution right now. Maybe as an individual or as a group it's got to go fix it. But often the solution to something we are working on is finding those who are already doing the work and sometimes for decades and maybe they already even know the answer but they don't have the resources or no one is listening or something else. Sometimes what is needed in order to create a more just scenario is for us to get behind those who already have the answers, to lift them up, to share our platforms, to leverage our expertise, our wisdom, or sometimes just to listen and show up for a while and wait. Sometimes we need to begin with the spiritual practice of waiting. 

The transliteration for the Hebrew word used in the psalm that I drew upon today. Qavah, for you I will wait. Lead me in your truth and teach me for you are the God of salvation. For you I wait all day long. But it's not a passive waiting. The root of the word is about tarrying with expectancy. Waiting on God isn't sitting at home. It's waiting, having the discipline to show up, doing what is good again and again and again. And then pausing, waiting for clarity to come. Being able to discern what is ours to hold and what is not before thinking we know what is right. 

What is next? What is needed before doing or going or creating or making? Sometimes the answer is to wait. I believe we can decide what to give time to by hearing from more than one place. In my world, it's if I hear something three times, I act. In our tradition, in the congregational tradition, there's actually kind of a system for discernment. There's a three ways. It's your internal sense, what you hear from the group, and what you hear from the spirit out there. But if we move too fast, we can miss it. In my experience, clarity needs a little room to show up. Maybe it's like as we heard from the poet Andrea Gibson last week, sometimes we try harder. But what is need is is for us to try softer. Because when we go slower, when we wait on God giving room for love, we give time for our amygdala, our lizard brain, right, to take a nap, for love to come in front instead of fear. So we can move with intention rather than responding reacting. The spiritual waiting is about both doing but with a sense of expectancy with a sense of spaciousness. As I said, it's not passive doing nothing and tossing thoughts and prayers to the wind. No, it's having the discipline to keep doing good but going slowly enough that we have room for the spirit. 

Now my friends, we have a real time example with exciting news today. So before you called me here and did a nason ride search in 2018, this congregation was gifted with over $100,000 from the sale of a campus ministry that most of us had nothing to do with. Then when I arrived we started a process. Then the pandemic happened. Then we did more of a process. Then we clarified what we wanted to use the money for. Then we clarified that it was for affordable housing. And then we said we're going to we're not sure what to use it for. And we waited and we waited and we waited and we kind of joked about it. And then Linda Woods said, "What about this?" And then John said, "What about this?" And then Karen said, "What about this?" And then push. And I don't know if you saw that the director of housing for Boulder County let us know that the commissioners have concluded their discussions and the county is funding the request from the San Lazaro mobile home park for 11.7 million. 

Bless you for waiting for the right thing. Maybe in some places God needs us to be right there to rush in to see it or pray about it or bear witness to it. But then perhaps the answer is to wait. Wait for clarity. Sometimes it really is that clear if we wait for it. If we can listen for it. So beloved of God, let us wait hearing both with expectancy and spaciousness. Let us go slow enough to hear, to see, to know. May it be so. Amen.