Tall Monastic Guy

Gratitude... while we wait

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was “thank you,” that would be sufficient. ~ Meister Eckhart

During each summer's pilgrimage to visit family in Indiana we travel across I-64, which is a rolling stretch of southern Indiana interstate that moves along an obscure piece of woolly wooded hills called the Hoosier National Forrest.

On this particular day as we headed east on 64 with Angie and the kids asleep in the back of the van I was caught off guard by the extreme green of the thick woods. After an unusually wet spring the immense patches of trees and grass were as deep of a green and as I’d ever experienced. I found myself ridiculously captivated at the scene emotionally overwhelmed feeling like that mystical moment of beauty was given as a gift specifically for my eyes. And the only response I could utter to God as I drove along was a simple “thank you” silently repeated probably 100 times over.

My response reminded me of an encounter I had with a homeless man a few weeks ago. I had agreed to give my street friend, Steve, a haircut and shortly after I finished his cut the news leaked and I’ve dished out several haircuts to the Denver street community since.

Waiting with...

What are you waiting for?

The idea of waiting seems like such passive, finger tapping on the table, empty space. But the type of waiting modeled by folks like Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Simeon (the guy who waited to die until he sees Jesus at the temple) or Rosa Parks (pictured above) points to the difficult paradox that God’s people deliberately practice a peculiar way of active waiting.

The Hebrew word for “to wait” - Qavah - is defined as “a binding together”. (Similar to the latin root of the word “Religion” also defined as “binding together”). That root definition in the Hebrew provides some helpful perspective for me to be reminded that amidst all the waiting that apparantly is so essential in growing up with God perhaps there is a quiet sacred union taking place… an intimate binding between me and the Creator of the cosmos.