Dunblane Cathedral Magazine December 2008
8 pages
Published by
Dunblane Cathedral
Copyright :
All rights reserved
No.
204 December 2008
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Waiting, Watching, Wanting
FROM THE MINISTER
DURING THE BUILDup to Christmas last year,
it was reported that the
head teacher of a school
somewhere in England had...
[More]
No.
204 December 2008
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Waiting, Watching, Wanting
FROM THE MINISTER
DURING THE BUILDup to Christmas last year,
it was reported that the
head teacher of a school
somewhere in England had
banned her pupils from
mentioning Christmas in
school.
The teacher had
decided that there should be
no references to Christmas
until 7 December, in an
attempt to stop the children
from becoming over-excited.
Her decision received a
mixed reaction from parents,
apparently.
Some believed
this was an attempt to squash
children’s natural sense of
expectation and enjoyment.
But others said she was
right to resist the prevailing
tendency for Christmas
preparations to begin earlier
and earlier every year - if not
in schools, then certainly in
the shops.
But the good news for that
teacher and for high-street
retailers everywhere is that
we are now in the season of
Advent: that period of the
Christian year where even in
the Church we are actually
allowed to start getting
excited.
Looking forward
is the order of the season,
and that’s official.
Yet what
is enshrined at the heart
of Advent is, nevertheless,
about waiting, patience, and
attending to what is yet to
come.
Impatience
That kind of sensibility
appears more and more
counter-cultural nowadays.
Our prevailing consumer
ethos does not consider
waiting to be a virtue.
When
the first credit cards came
on to the market the popular
slogan was, “It takes the
waiting out of wanting”
- capturing perfectly the
promise of a piece of plastic
to release us from the misery
of scrimping and saving, and
to offer instant gratification.
Much of our daily lives is
built on not having to wait.
Fast food, speedy broadband,
wider roads, one-click
internet shopping: the gap
between wanting and waiting
has never been smaller.
Constructive Waiting
Contrary to some people’s
views of religion, however,
this is not about preaching
self-denial for the sake of it.
Clearly, some kinds of waiting
are not, and never will be,
healthyorconstructive: those
excruciating ordeals that only
public transport can provide,
when there’s a delay and no
one tells you a thing; or the
terrible waiting for news of
someone who is missing, or
held hostage, or in hospital.
But these are experiences
born of impotence, of
helplessness: a powerlessness
where it’s impossible to do
any more than just .
.
.
wait.
Any chance to affect what
happens to us has in some
way been snatched from our
hands.
We’ve been robbed of
the ability to shape our own
destiny or that of others.
The kind of waiting that can
be kept during Advent is
“Much of our daily lives are built on not having
to wait.
Fast food, speedy broadband, wider
roads, one-click internet shopping: the gap
between wanting and waiting has never
been smaller”
actually very different.
It’s
an active word - it’s really
a time of preparation, a time
of taking stock, of taking
control of the time ahead,
looking forward, planning
and deciding what our
priorities ought to be.
One
Advent hymn advises us to
“watch and pray” - to use the
space between the promise of
something and its fulfilment,
as a constructive period of
discernment and action
when we can actually achieve
something worthwhile.
Hope
The essential ingredient of
that kind of waiting is hope.
Advent is a time for stepping
aside from other pressures to
see how things could be, if
only we had the courage and
the vision to see the world
from another perspective to see a world transformed by
the power of love.
That kind
of reflection enables us to
make the kind of space in our
lives where waiting is not just
about wasting time, or getting
frustrated and impatient, but
a way of measuring ourselves
against the challenges and
opportunities to come.
Without learning how to
wait, how can we possibly
learn to know what it is that
we really want?
Colin G McIntosh
See Page 3
Services
Christmas
[Less]
Insert a miniCalaméo on your website or your blog
