Waiting for God

by Bro. Boniface
(Muensterschwarzach Abbey, Germany)


Waiting for someone is certainly not one of our favored things in life. We wait at the doctor´s office, we sometimes have to wait in line for something, or we wait for our train or bus. Waiting seems like lost time, we imagine what all we could do during this time if we were somewhere else.

And yet is not life a waiting game? Once we are conceived in our mother´s womb we wait for nine months for the day of light. We wait and grow and wait some more while in school, collete, life to begin in earnest perhaps with marriage. We await the next stept on the ladder that brings us further up the chain of command perhaps. And so life goes on, waiting.

And then we are of senior age. For what do we wait now? Some may wait for retirement to begin, for activities in life to change, for new pleasures to begin. And then for what do we wait? Is it not in the end that we are waiting for God? How many of my brother monks are waiting in the infirmary for the day when the Lord tells them it is enough, come and enter the joy of eternal life.

Sometimes when I see our elderly or old confreres I wonder. How long must you wait and live and wait and suffer and live life as best you can.

When ones senses are ok and the mental capabilities work one can perhaps make some use of the time. When I see one who is not lucid anymore it seems to me that the waiting must be harder for this one. Or is it? That question I cannot answer. I trust that God is also in the waiting towards the end of life and makes it bearable for us.

Comments for Waiting for God

Click here to add your own comments

Mar 06, 2012
 GRACE
by: Jon K

"My grandmother lived until 103 ( passed away in 2006) and I have often wondered about her last thoughts or ideas. She was living with my Aunt and though she had stopped talking to anyone, they tell me that she smiled and chuckled a lot.

I would like to think that she was anticipating with great happiness, the end of it all, and perhaps the beginning of something else. "

From Jon K:

My father passed away approximately the same time your grandmother did. He was 88. My father was lonely all his life, as was his father. He had been on a lifelong quest to find the community of family and break that lifelong isolation. Never during his lifetime did he find that farm.

Once he visited me at a commune I lived on, called “Madrakara”. He took me aside and told me, “If I had known of such a place as this when I was your age, you never would have been born.”

My sister did hospice community for our father at her house. Towards the end of my father’s life, a second personality, a wide eyed, innocent child, emerged in him. Though he and I had been alienated for decades, the two year old told me over the phone, that he wanted me to come. So I drove to CA from south FL.

Glad I did. That community at my sister’s house was as tight as my brother, sister and I have ever been. Father lasted for months and months. He did not want to leave the party.

I recall one evening my father, who never lost that hard driving competitive and biting businessman lifetime personality of his, was turning circles, pirouetting in the living room. He was saying, “It is incredible. Wonderful. I can’t believe it. I recall asking him repeatedly, “What is so wonderful Dad? What is it you can’t believe?”

But he wasn’t looking at me. He was not responding to my repeated questions as I tried to understand what he was talking about. He was just smiling and looking into an indeterminate distance. And turning. And gazing. And broadly smiling.


Whatever he saw remains a mystery.

Thinking back on this inscrutable experience, I choose to call it "Grace".
Mar 05, 2012
 Forgive God
by: Jon K

For two millennia Man has sought the mercy and forgiveness of his Creator. My idea is that for the next two thousand years we devote our meditations to forgiving the Supreme Identity.

[somewhere on this website I have posted a longer contribution called "Finish Epiphany"]
Mar 05, 2012
 Count Your Blessings
by: RickC

The Title says it all - we have many of God's blessing we just do not appreciate.

When you see someone without a smile - give them one of yours - being able to smile is a blessing.

God is Always GOOD.
Mar 01, 2012
 Waiting For God
by: Zenobia

Having just lost the last of a trio of good friends who made up a unique four-some ( I am the last) I can certainly identify with your inspired writing and we do not know of course, when it will end.

We trust and we wait, not fearfully, but just going along our way, doing our thing and enjoying what life there is left, and pray ( at least I do) for a peaceful ending.

My grandmother lived until 103 ( passed away in 2006) and I have often wondered about her last thoughts or ideas. She was living with my Aunt and though she had stopped talking to anyone, they tell me that she smiled and chuckled a lot.

I would like to think that she was anticipating with great happiness, the end of it all, and perhaps the beginning of something else.

Thank you for your insightful and encouraging words!

Zenobia

Click here to add your own comments

Return to Brother Bon's Blog.