Ritual Of Hope

First Sunday of Advent

Mark 13:32-37

In the past two years I've done two smart things: I went fishing last summer and then I went fishing again this summer. Fishing is teaching me the art of waiting. And how to wait is what this scripture and the spirit of Advent are all about.

There is the obvious parallel: The very act of fishing, like the celebration of Advent, is a ritual of hope. Both are filled with expectation; we are waiting for something.

But some similarities are more subtle. Don't be deceived by tranquil scenes of grandpa, fishing pole in hand, leaning against a tree, eyes closed, lazing away under the hot summer sun. Take it from me, to be truly fishing is to be constantly on guard. You are always watchful, always mindful, always alert for the slightest touch on the line. The attention is so focused that eventually you can feel or hear a fish circling the bait. But if the concentration breaks, even for a split second, chances are you've missed what you were waiting for.

Perhaps it's not a tragedy to lose a perch or a pike, but to think that the Messiah might have brushed your shoulder and continued by unnoticed is another story.

A peace and justice fanatic like myself who spends days dialing phone numbers, organizing demonstrations, attending meetings, writing articles, answering letters, leading workshops, and doing other important activities guaranteed to drag in the kingdom of God needs to be reminded that waiting has value. We're on a pretty tight deadline, after all. According to the experts, we have about 20 years to prevent a nuclear holocaust. There's no time to wait around.

Then Advent slips into my prayer cycle and whispers a reminder: Jesus waited to be born. No instant Messiah here.

That insight lasts until breakfast when the daily frantic routine sets in and with it, the temptation to believe that unless I'm doing something, nothing is being done. When I take my friend Zelda to the welfare office, I know I'm in for a long wait. I try not to think of the hours spent there as a waste of time, but I find myself anxious to be about other projects. I get antsy and keep glancing at my watch, never fully present to Zelda, the book I'm flipping through, or the other people around me.

If, at the end of the day, someone asks me, "What did you do today?" I reply without hesitation, and with a touch of resentment, "Absolutely nothing. I spent all afternoon waiting with Zelda." Immediately my words bounce back and confront me with a tough question: Do I really believe waiting is useless? Or am I avoiding the harsh truth that I don't know how to wait?

This past year I had the opportunity to engage in two exhausting wrestling bouts with waiting. In July I participated in a pray-in at the White House and spent about 28 hours in the D.C. jail, almost all of it in waiting, just waiting. I never expected the waiting to bother me like it did. It shocked me that I couldn't be at ease with the present moment, I who pride myself on a love of solitude and often romanticize the jail cell as the next best thing to a hermitage. Twenty-eight hours without a book or a typewriter, and I was raging inside with quiet desperation. It was as if the gray prison walls began to seep through my pores and settle inside me. All my words and actions for peace seemed futile and senseless and empty. I couldn't pray or concentrate, merely struggle heroically to maintain an exterior calm. Many nights since then I have drifted into an uneasy sleep wondering--am I that shallow, are my spiritual resources that thin?

And I waited for my mother to die this year. Although it took less than a week, it was not an easy death. She had what the doctor thought was a severe asthma attack, and when I went to the hospital I found her on a respirator, a trapped animal, squirming, fighting like hell to break free. Although her arms were strapped, she managed to scribble two notes on a pad beside her bed. What turned out to be her final words to me were: "I have been committed here against my will" and "I want to go home." I grabbed her icy hand and tried to reassure her, "Mom, you're doing better today. Try to relax. The machine is going to help you." But she shook her head "no" over and over again, and there was a certainty about it. The look in her eyes screamed what she couldn't say, "I am dying, Mary Lou. Help me."

How could I help her? Oh, I sat and held her hand, and when she slipped into a coma, I recited prayers aloud and tried to keep up a conversation on the chance she could still hear. But the vigil I kept was not expectant, I was waiting for nothing. Even the poignant childhood memories that surged upon me as I sat by the bedside and the closeness that grew as my father and brothers and myself waited together were infected by a sense of absurdity. Behold, the woman who bore thee and on whose breasts you sucked--see her kidneys collapse, see her blood pressure plunge, see her heart stop.

Both of these stand-offs with waiting have frightened me a bit. In jail I discovered I had little to wait with, and my mother's death forced upon me the essential question: Is there anything to wait for?

The truth is, sometimes I go fishing out of desperation. And when the waters are frozen over, along comes Advent.

Second Sunday of Advent

Psalm 85; Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

"Kindness and truth shall embrace." Now there's a love scene worth waiting for.

Too often peace and justice zealots like myself get mesmerized by the ascetic figure of John the Baptist, striding boldly out of the desert preaching a stern and uncompromising message of truth. Our message is also harsh and straight from the mouth of God: Get rid of your boat and second car, stop paying war taxes, don't eat meat, quit your job in the nuclear plant. If there's one word we've mastered, it's John's "Repent!"

During Scripture study a few months ago, our community was discussing a passage from Isaiah in which the prophet wrote that rain and snow do not return to the heavens "till they have watered the earth making it fertile and fruitful." Our garden was just giving birth to the tomato crop, and so we were full of nature imagery and spent the time remembering how the soft summer rains had broken up the caked earth and allowed the seed to grow. We contrasted it with the hard and sudden downpour that often floods the ground and drowns the seed. Then someone drew a comparison: We peacemakers are often so intense about preaching the truth that we cause more harm than good by trying to force growth when the ground has not been prepared.

All of us could relate to the metaphor of trying to clear a straight path for the Lord with dynamite and a bulldozer instead of a pail of water and a hand shovel.

Recently, an example of a sudden downpour on hard ground made national news. When the decision to go ahead with the neutron bomb was announced by President Reagan, Bishop Matthiesen of Amarillo, Texas, issued a statement protesting the decision and calling upon workers in the nuclear plant in his diocese to consider resigning. I was filled with jubilation. Rather than another general condemnation of nuclear arms, we had a specific plan of action.

Then the next week I read an interview in the National Catholic Reporter with one of the "unclean"—a man who works at Pantex and puts the final touches on nuclear bombs. Robert Gutierrez, a 49-year-old Mexican-American who is a deacon in his parish, told the reporter, "This job is the first good thing I ever had. I quit school after the fourth grade to help support my family, but later earned a GED [general education degree]....If the church thought my job was immoral, why wasn't something said seven years ago when I applied to the diaconate program?" Gutierrez says he can't sleep at night because he has a family to support, and he feels trapped.

Please don't misunderstand, I think Bishop Matthiesen did a brave and prophetic thing, but I also believe Gutierrez and others like him deserve some soft rains.

How can kindness and truth embrace here? Well, we could say that for his part Gutierrez should repent and quit his job, and for its part the diocesan church of Amarillo should provide a pastoral program for Pantex workers, re-training, and a weekly check for the family until Gutierrez finds another job.

This would be an ideal enactment of the reading from Isaiah to "comfort the people" and to imitate the God who fondles and nurses us along like a shepherd does new-born lambs. Would that it were all this neat.

Gutierrez is one person and one paycheck. Can the diocese do the same for all 500 Catholics employed at Pantex? How about the tens of thousands involved in the nuclear industry across the country: the scientists, engineers, military personnel, secretaries, and assembly workers? And that's only one sinful institution. What about the people who earn a living at Mobil Oil, Campbells, and Nestle's, and other multinationals that violate human rights?

Then think of all the victims of the "truth-filled" statements we've made about abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc. Imagine all the struggling people caught in sinful situations that they can't break away from. Imagine you and me. Thank God for the letter from Peter which reminds us of the infinite patience of God, "...he shows you generous patience, since he wants none to perish but all to come to repentance."

If God is so hesitant about calling us to judgment, maybe for our part we could pray, "At times, let my passion for truth bend to kindness."

When he was a wise old man Aldous Huxley wrote: "It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with human problems all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.' " And it was a Western mystic who said, "Do you want to be a saint? Be kind, be kind, be kind."

Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B., was coordinator of Pax Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, and national coordinator for Benedictines for Peace when this article appeared. She is the author of Peace Is Our Calling: Contemporary Monasticism and the Peace Movement.