Waiting
As a child, I found counting down the days to Christmas so long! Days blur by now I am 60. Still, waiting can be challenging in some contexts
I’ve waited hours for this
I’ve made myself so sick
I wish I’d stayed asleep today
I never thought that this day would end
I never thought that tonight could ever be
This close to me
I think I have been really clear in the past posts that I am really really loving my life. Even with the uncertainty and darkness in the world today, there is so much light, life, and love surrounding me every moment, my gratitude keeps overflowing in delight.
Yet I still struggle with certain things.
Like waiting for the next time I can see my friend.
So help me if you can, I’ve got to get
Back to the house at Pooh Corner by one
You’d be surprised, there’s so much to be done
Count all the bees in the hive
Chase all the clouds from the sky
Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh
Or waiting to see what will happen next.
There are always next things, aren’t there? As long as we are alive?
So there is always a part of every day that is waiting.
Tonight will be our sixth session of Being With at the Cathedral in Hamilton.
It’s certainly one of the things I’m looking forward to at the moment/waiting for, but I bring it up not for that reason, really, but because at the very first session we were talking about Hope. That sense that there is something really beautiful and exciting waiting for us after this life is over.
But hope is about a lot of things, isn’t it? Children hope for lovely gifts under the tree at Christmas, but more importantly, about things like hoping Dad would return and be part of the family again. (Spoiler alert: nope, did not happen for me.)
Teenagers hope to find somebody to love.
A young woman wants to find that bliss in marriage.
Or is waiting for her first child to be born. (Did you know this song is among other things about waiting for childbirth?)
While it’s easy imaginationally to travel back 55, 50, 43, 40, or 38 years back into the past and remember what these different kinds of waitings felt like in my past, even to remember those feelings vividly, it’s really different now.
I spend a lot less time these days waiting and a lot more time living.
Les fleurs et les animaux
Sont tous un peu de ma famille
On est tous partis de rien
Vivre
Torrents, ruisseaux
Faites, faites, faites couler l’eau
Regardez comme on est beau
On veut vivre
Plantes, plantes, grimper
C’est vous rendre dans nos corps
Venez danser sur la mort
Et vivre
Soleil, terre, forêt, les plaines
Entrez dans le sang de nos veines
Nous devons devenir forts
Nous devons vivre
I especially love listening to Vivre through my earbuds while walking around in Nature drinking in “flowers, animals… sun, earth, forest, plains…”. Reveling in how good it is to be alive in this world.
Sometimes, though.
Sometimes, I wait.