Waiting as a Way of Life

After sitting meditation this morning I picked up the small labyrinth model that my daughter gave me a couple of years ago and was moving mentally through it as I have done almost every day for the last two years. Halfway through the exercise it struck me, as I entered the center and stayed for just a moment before heading back out, that a large part of the discipline of the Labyrinth is STAYING at the center long enough to hear the Word.

I am good with the part of the symboliic journey that puts me on the road - that keeps me on the road - and I can let stuff go along the way in and ponder what I want to bring out, but I continue to remain rather uncomfortable with the part where I am supposed to WAIT at the center.

The last two years have been for me a constant dropping away of the extraneous b.s. of the first half of my life. At each step along the way, each turning around at a corner, each doubling back of the trail, I again think, "now... this is it. I've done all the work. It's time to move on." What I find, however, is that no, unfortunately there is more work to be done.

Perhaps that's part of the difficulty of facing into the problem of New Orleans. I, for one, want everything fixed NOW. Actually, I want it all fixed a year ago. But there are still things for us to learn, and there are still things for us to do. There are still messages that The God/Goddess wants us to hear. It feels to me that I have been missing this huge lesson of the Labyrinth experience because I have forgotten (or avoided) the waiting part.

It's not for nothing that Moses was not called by God until he was over 80 (McSweeney's, by the way, just published a FIRST novel by an author of age 90, so don't go figuring that the Moses phenomenon has passed).

It's not for nothing that the Israelites had to wait in the desert for 40 years or that the Babylonian Exile lasted for something like 70.

Perhaps it's not for nothing (besides governmental ineptitude and graft that is) that the New Orleans Diaspora seemingly continues forever. Is it possible that there is something waiting here for us to learn?

There is a message for us at the center of the Labyrinth but to hear it we have to enter that center through a slow and winding path, letting go of our overwrought personnas and our excess baggage along the way. Once there, right when we're damned ready to go dashing back with the message (like Phidippides on the plains of Marathon) we find that no... we must wait instead. We must take a breath, sit, loosen our muscles, our hearts, and our minds and listen for the Word made Flesh.

I don't know how long it will take. All I know is that for me... well, I'm not yet done with waiting.