On Waiting

On Waiting

December 1, 2005

From the first phone call several nights ago saying my former teammates with
Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq had been taken hostage, I have been waiting
and hoping for good news.

Such waiting involves obsessive checking of email, scanning news headlines,
seeking details of exactly who was taken, and how, and who took them, and why;
later watching video clips of Jim and Tom, with their frightened faces staring
back at me. Waiting and hoping for good news, knowing it may not come.
Wondering if I could do any good, were I with them. Wondering if I will ever
see them again.

It would continue to be a week of phone calls in dark hours. Later, my family
called from the hospital saying my little niece had a serious and unknown
illness affecting her kidneys. I'd just seen her at Thanksgiving, healthy and
energetic as ever. Now back at school, I am too many hours and weeks away from
being able to return. I wait for their next call, when they have more news.

Waiting in such times recalls other difficult waits. In Iraq I waited for Jim
to return with the body of a team member killed in a terrible car accident,
while waiting at the hospital to see if our teammate injured in the same
accident would make it. I also remember the night when it was Jim who was
waiting for me to come home, hoping that I and my teammates had survived the
massive suicide bombings where we were so many hours earlier. How they knew all
day they could never hope to find us in the chaos and crowds and had no choice
but to wait. Later, there was my own waiting for the images of death I had
witnessed to fade from my dreams.

There was another night when I was waylaid coming home and my teammate thought I
had been taken hostage during those crisis months. I remember coming home and
being physically picked up and held on to as though I were the most precious
thing in existence. I remember also the Iraqi families we interviewed in our
human rights work, waiting for their disappeared loved ones to return from the
U.S. prison camps, alive or dead.

There is the waiting for long and painful ordeals to end, such as the one which
now leads me to leave my seminary and my denomination; waiting for justice,
waiting for an end to fear…and not knowing the future, or when or if a good
end will ever come. Hoping that strength of spirit and commitment to integrity
will outlast despair and isolation.

Someone in these past blurry hours told me I seemed like a very patient person.
I replied something to the effect that I hate waiting.

Advent is a season of waiting; waiting and hoping for good news which seems
almost foolish to expect. This Advent I wait for hostages, health, and justice.
Years ago people suffered and longed for good news, despite the odds of living
under occupation by the Roman Empire and the corruption of religious leadership.
This Advent season, what are you waiting for, even despite the odds?

In waiting, I felt somewhat guilty for talking, because I had no good news to
share. Why would anyone wish to hear? One friend responded that, “sometimes
when there is no good news is when it is most important to talk.” Later, in
relaying the difficulties of the week, Dr. Sawyer counseled that the burdens we
must carry do not have to be carried alone. That is true. Not only do we look
to God, we look to those who are open and prepared to wait with us in patience
and hope. Advent is also a season of waiting together, as faith communities, in
the darkness, anticipating the light.

Wednesday evening at the prayer vigil for the hostages which McCormick students
organized as part of the weekly Taize service, I felt much less alone here on
campus. And while thinking of Jim and Tom and the others waiting to be
released, I was grateful they had each other. Knowing their Catholic Worker and
Quaker backgrounds, I mentioned that they were likely waiting in prayer and
singing the same songs we were. (And that they were probably befriending their
captors). I prayed that they could feel and be carried by the prayers of us who
were watching and waiting with them.

As we wait together for deliverance, God waits with us, to turn human suffering
into healing and joy. Though the wait is long, we anticipate with hope the
Promised One, the source of unity, celebration, and new life. Blessings, and
peace.

Le Anne Clausen