The Blog That Speaks: ‘Tis the Season
It’s autumn. Brilliant colors of gold and pale yellow are painted across the variegated elevations of the mountainous terrain near where I live. The trees glisten in the bright Colorado sun. I can’t help but gasp.
Various hues glimmer in the dazzling sunlight amidst the crisp autumn air. My 35mm camera is simply unable to fully capture the moment—blazing colors amidst the sounds of the leaves rustling in the breeze being illuminated in the bright blue sky.
Autumn means it is leaf peeping season in Colorado. It is the time that residents pile into their vehicles to ascend high mountain passes to catch a glimpse of the beauty. We have been waiting. Since August, Internet articles have been predicting when peak peeping season will occur. We waited for the day to catch the beautiful sight as signs of summer slowly began to fade. Granted, summer resisted as one more heat spell descended. However, the waiting for nature’s brilliance is no more. It is now here, for some regions of the state. For others, the peak for peeping is past as the pretty leaves are replaced with a chilly, white beauty.
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The season of autumn, my favorite of the four, pulls me into nostalgia. Having been raised on a farm, I yearn for the days when I followed the seasons rather than the ticking clock. Winter brought a period of increased rest. The shortened daylight meant the whole family ate supper together at 6:00 PM.
As Earth’s tilt shifted as it rotated around the sun, lengthening the daylight, supper slowly became later. Additional signs appeared that it was soon time for fieldwork to begin. A calf or two being born and seed being purchased were the sure signals of spring’s soon arrival. As the death of winter gave way to the resurrection of spring, agricultural implements were brought out of storage and prepared for planting. Simultaneously, more and more calves dotted the landscape as more cows gave birth to little ones.
My dad strictly adhered to the adage, work while the sun shines. Thus, when the season of summer was at its peak, supper for him was between 9:00 and 10:00 PM. The fields of summer became a wondrous green as the crops grew and the farmers prayed for rain. Pastures were populated with cows and calves as the little families were far from the barns of their beginnings.
I reaped the benefits of the seasons of farm living in August. I savored the sugary sweetness as my teeth sank into the pale, yellow kernels of corn on the cob. Biting into the luscious plump kernels engendered juice running out of the corners of my mouth. There was no question: Dad’s sweet corn was THE best. People placed orders for his sweet corn during his retirement years. My dad planted and cared for three to four acres of sweet corn, which he picked and sold at public places in town. His shrunken short frame seemed to grow a little higher and his chest bulged a little bigger with pride when people commented how his sweet corn was the best they ever had.
As fall came, the small grain crops were already harvested when it became the row crop’s turn. The farm was located on the prairie with very few trees. As a result, the biggest signs of fall were the cutting of field corn for silage and the weaning of the calves, not the changing colors of the leaves. Day and night the farm was filled with the mourning sounds of the recently weaned calves as they seemed to bellow, “Maaa-ma. Maaaa-ma.” As the daylight hours continued to diminish, the time that my dad ate supper became earlier and earlier until the family ate together at 6:00 PM once again.
Yet, beyond waiting for the seasons to change, there exists another kind of waiting—one more unpredictable by nature. As autumn, winter, spring, and summer each take a turn, an end to the waiting for each season is foreseeable. The calendar marks the days. But with this other kind of waiting, it is less so. The colors of its future remain unknown as it is painted by the brush of uncertainty. Unlike waiting for a national holiday or the commencement of a planned event, this waiting evades a definitive countdown. It is a waiting that is open vs. closed. A waiting without borders. As such, it may become more challenging, or even more burdensome, at times. Its very essence pushes back against a culture that incessantly insists on deadlines, speed, and efficiency.
This open waiting appears when a survivor is waiting to heal from trauma. It emerges as persons wait for a disease to run its course. It is seen in waiting for a child, sibling, partner, or friend to seek help for an addiction. It is visible as individuals wait for cancer to slip into remission. It materializes when a childless couple is trying to become pregnant. It surfaces as one waits for reconciliation in a relationship in which one has been cut off. It emanates when waiting for a grief journey to become less intense and all-consuming. For some people of faith, it includes waiting for God to supernaturally intervene in a situation that exceeds human limitations or waiting for God’s clear guidance or direction. It may include waiting for a promise or a dream to be fulfilled.
Try as we might, open waiting cannot be rushed. It endures, tenaciously so.
It is in stark contrast to the culture of the United States/Canada, which tends to express an intolerance toward this kind of waiting. Waiting in our culture is often illustrated as waiting impatiently at a red light, drumming our fingers on the steering wheel. It is pictured as sitting in a doctor’s office, watching the minutes slowly tick by. This is a passive waiting, in which I do very little as I wait for something or someone, who holds the power over my time. Like a hamster on a wheel, we try to hurry but are powerless to go anywhere.
With hurrying, we hear the ticking of each second of the clock. With each tick we hear time slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, as the Steve Miller Band reminds us. To avoid this ticking of the clock, we try to control time by abiding by strict schedules. As practical theologian John Swinton explains:
[The clock gives] the impression that we can control time. When we look at a clock, we imagine that we can see time. When we see something, we are able to name it. When we can name something, we feel that we can control it.[1]
However, such control is an illusion. We cannot stop time or slow it down and neither can we tame it. Oh, we try. We allot X-number of minutes for this activity and Y-number of minutes for that activity, prior to catching some Zs for this-number of minutes. The busier we are, the more productive we perceive ourselves and the more successful we appear to others. Yet, this only serves to increasingly delude us into believing we preside over time. It is all a fantasy. In our efforts to control, or even tame it, the reverse is actually occurring:
Time is controlling, or taming, us.
Time remains the dictator, and we, unwittingly, are its loyal subjects. The more we strive to lasso it, the more time commands us. The more rigid we become through our minute-by-minute schedules, the more frequently we yield and bow to the deity of time.
It is this ethos which borderless waiting inherently confronts. Practicing open waiting is like paddling against the current of the culture. It is unpopular. Thus, it can be hard, lonely, and exhausting. Unsurprisingly, then, some will cease waiting alongside and/or for the other altogether.
Our society is only willing to wait so long. Consider someone healing from trauma or attempting to overcome an addiction. At first, we might validate a person’s pain or struggle, but if it goes on too long, we stop waiting. Perhaps we implicitly adhere to the philosophy that people are masters of their own fate; hence, hurting individuals may discover their support waning if the healing journey is prolonged beyond what is culturally acceptable.[2]
In our rush, we may overlook a defect of hurriedness. A life of hurrying lacks a connection with those around us and ourselves. Such a life becomes more about me, my anxiety, and my desire for meaning. Consider when we are late for a meeting, and we come upon someone, who is shuffling down the sidewalk, stopping periodically. In that moment, life becomes more about us than anyone else. We attempt to safely maneuver ourselves around this unhurried human barrier (and maybe deliberately avoid a connection in the process). My point about a hurried life is: we miss out on connecting in meaningful relationships and to whatever is around us. We forget that it is in connecting where aliveness and healing occur.
As one who seeks to integrate my Christian beliefs, I reflect on how the concepts of hurrying and waiting impact my faith. My pentecostal tradition has historically stressed hurrying. However, in doing so, has it indirectly overemphasized human power rather than God’s power? When interviewing pentecostal survivors of sexual violence who were seeking healing (see Coming Soon: See My Body, See Me), I heard multiple times about those who believed that the survivor was to be healed instantaneously. Counselors, who I also interviewed, spoke of clients who expected healing to be immediate. Unfortunately, when instant healing failed to transpire, the clients blamed themselves. The press for instantaneous healing ends up alienating us rather than meeting the need for a fulfilling connection with each other, self, and/or God. It places the emphasis on me (e.g., my faith, my holiness, my performance, etc.), not God, thereby missing the notion that healing is found in a meaningful connection.
If we as a church are to return to a ministry of waiting, we must adjust our focus from us to God. Practical theologian Andrew Root states:
Waiting means that God can surprise us, shake us up, move us. Waiting makes God the star of the show.[3]
By readjusting our focus, we may find that we are not alone in borderless waiting. As the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, all of creation is also groaning as it waits (8:22). Yet, it is not only creation and created beings who wait. As we all groan together in our waiting, the Spirit, too, joins us, praying with us (8:23, 26).
Thus, waiting is not an evil to be overcome—a time span we must erase.
Instead, our waiting and praying may generate a connection with all of creation, with ourselves, and with the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit groans with us, waiting moves from passive isolation to a form of participation in ministry with the Spirit. As the Spirit joins us in our groaning as we continue to wait and pray, we start to join the Spirit in the Spirit’s ministry of waiting, praying, and hoping.
If you are waiting today, that waiting is an indicator of a larger waiting: the healing for all of creation. As I close, I invite you to listen to a song by Andrew Peterson which speaks of groaning (waiting) for complete healing for the whole world. May the Spirit encourage you today as you are reminded that our open waiting is a participation in a ministry of waiting. We are joining with the Holy Spirit in our groaning and prayers as the Spirit joins with us.
Andrew Peterson’s Is He Worthy?
[1] John Swinton, Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship (Waco: TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), loc. 538-539, Kindle Edition.
[2] See Alexander McFarlane and Bessel van der Kolk, “Trauma and Its Challenge to Society,” Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, edited by Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. (New York: Guilford, 2007), 24–46.
[3] Andrew Root and Blair D. Bertrand, When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2023), Kindle Edition, 117.