On waiting

Yesterday when I arrived at the doctor's office I found the waiting room jammed full so I prepared myself for a long wait. Of course there are magazines. Of course I have my iPhone and there is always something interesting happening on Facebook. I didn't touch a magazine and yes, I did open Facebook, for a little while, until I began to reflect on the meaning, challenge and beauty of waiting. I updated by status: Waiting is a significant activity in life and to benefit from the "empty" time of waiting is a gift." A put my iPhone away and began to be still, sensing the calm and not so empty air of waiting. Sure, I was not the only one waiting and at least one other person was sitting still, unoccupied and unbothered nor bored. I felt like seizing the moment, the luxury of waiting. I remembered a colleague who worked in Africa for years describing the reality of waiting for the bus, which countless people do every day, for long stretches and without complaining. I remember he said after a long time he began to overcome the nervousness about the time wasted and discovered the beauty and calmness of waiting. I also recalled people I know talking about the endless hours or days of waiting in the army. Today I think waiting there had a dimension of drill. Creating sufficient dullness so people are ready to do whatever destruction of killing is demanded of them.

The best part, in spite of my having a time constraint that afternoon (and it worked all out perfectly fine), was the sense of having no rush, no stress, no pending thing, no impatience whatsoever. An hour really and completely free of any of that stuff. It felt like a blessing of quietness, stillness with nothing to perform or to proof, not even the activity of impatience.

I think there are essentially three ways to wait: A common way is to let the nerves be stretched; is perhaps the most common way, especially in situations where waiting is not expected. Another way is to keep yourself busy with all kinds of useful, necessary or useless occupations, physical or mental. The third, less common but most beneficial way if you ask me, is to empty your mind, quiet your body and be still. In our day and context this seems to have become a rare gift for most and I'm really worried here that its frequency increases for me.

Oh yes, the other thing I did with my iPhone was to check out my new decibel application. I discovered that the average noise level at the waiting room was around 60. That's far from still but it did not bother me. I recalled my professor at the conservatory who told us about how he studied the scores of the Christmas Oratorio in the trenches of WWII, and he heard the music all over and above the noise of shells, aircraft and shouting around him.

Finally, we have managed to turn even those times of intentional waiting into performances and activities with outcomes: prayer and worship. But let's not go there right now. Let's wait a little.

The beauty of messiness

The Swiss are known to be orderly, to have an obsession with keeping things tidy. You can see that when you cross small towns and villages in some areas. Messiness tends to be seen here as a heresy, as a sign of poor personality or bad morale. Some pastor once told a young member of his church that the mess in his car pointed to a screwed relationship with Jesus. I guess some people feel that way about this guy to this day - he is an artist and an extraordinarily creative person, and, in his way, a messy one.

Of course there are those in Swiss counter culture - and elsewhere - who seem to think that for things to be alive, creative or healthy they had to be messy in an unpleasant way. It may be that for some people ugliness is synonymous with wholeness, but I feel the other way around. Except that messiness and ugliness are two entirely different things altogether.

That's what the surroundings of my house are compellingly reminding me of these days. What a beautiful mess! I'm not talking about objects left asunder by people who don't care about them or forgot to put them away. That's ugly and I can see it in my neighborhood, too. I'm talking about the stuff that seems to appear from almost bare brownish, rocky and rather uninspiring mud. The only thing after snow are some half rotten leafs and stems, as if the wind had forgotten to blow them away, or they were not good enough for the snails or the worms. Behold, before the snow was all gone, the first flowers appeared, white and strong yellow, and before you know it the entire surface is green of all imaginable sorts. The only thing I don't tolerate are nettles, not here. And yes, I will pull some greens that seem to overrule the wild strawberries which taste so exquisit. Of course, there are the parts and patches where things are planted, raspberries, potatoes, beans, zucchini and other vegetables. As much as these are enjoyable and bring satisfaction - even if the cost of seed and the time of tending are in no reasonable correlation to the harvest - the greatest beauty by far is in the messy parts around the house where nature has free reign. The regenerating power and forgiving mercy of nature is truly amazing. Nature is not obsessed with unceasing growth and non-stop accumulation. Nature is cyclic: birth and unfolding, growth, abundance, even wastefulness, decline and death to rest and to leave time for a fresh beginning, as amazing and joyful as before, never exactly the same twice and yet in continuity and honoring what was before, producing the seed of what will come thereafter. In all of this colors and consistence keep changing, as do flavors and tastes. All of it is in ongoing interaction with other plants, insects, bees, and other living things.

Peace is not tidy and orderly. Nor is it fully in our control. It is messy and confusing as nature. I love my messy, beautiful and peaceful patches. They warm my heart and cool my head. Inspire the body and energize the spirit. Organic disorder and so alive...

International Year of Reconciliation

2009 is the International Year of Reconciliation, proclaimed by the UN upon an initiative from Nicaragua. The Martin Luther King Institute at UPOLI (a technical university run by the Baptists in Managua) in 1997 initiated efforts culminating in the UN decision in 2006. It takes nearly 10 years to bring a project to the UN for decision and 12 years from the conception of a project until its actual implementation. However, the vision and timeliness of the MLK Institute is stunning: Back in 1997, reconciliation as a theme, although applied in South Africa with mixed but mostly positive results, was not ready for the international political arena and the UN system - or better, the political arena and UN system were not ready for reconciliation as a theme then. Nor had reconciliation made its entry into the vocabulary of political parties. Now they seem to be closer, as many signs indicate, from Canada to Angola and elsewhere across the globe. Stalin's motto was to divide and rule, as was generally the practice, also by Western nations. Uncounted communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia still suffer from the late symptoms of Western colonial imperialism and Jean Ziegler's book on the hatred against the West is a powerful testimony of that reality. It is truly frightening when you consider the possibilities of a pay-day for the nations if the old regime of pacification through violence, division, oppression, and merciless rule were to continue. The Taliban push in Pakistan is an unpleasant indication of such rule at its worst being still and again alive and attractive to some.

At the same time - thank God because who could claim credit? - there is a sense and discovery that what might heal the world and allow for productivity, welfare, and peace is the road of reconciliation. Churches can't say, see, we've always known, because they were too often too much part and accomplices of the divide-and-rule regimes. Their time has expired and that's good news indeed. The tide is turning and it is turning in favor of those who seek reconciliation and justice.

Here's where we find a thorn in the flesh, though: it happens easily and quickly that justice gets in the way of reconciliation or vice-versa, depending on whom you ask. There is no easy way out and any quick or cheap fix will not do. At least there have to be two more ingredients: truth and mercy. None of which come easily, neither in politics nor in the church.

Meanwhile we continue the journey - reconciliation is a long and winding road -towards a more humane and less deadly world....

The Courage of the Truth

Michel Foucault, who described himself as a historian of ideas, or an archeologist of knowing (archéologue des savoirs), entitled his last course at the Collège de France "Le courage de la vérité" - the courage of the truth. It is on governance of self and of others and I suspect it has a lot to say in today's crisis, which is really not a financial crisis. Just as there is hardly such a thing as financial crisis of an institution, is is always a crisis of essence and of pertinence, the world's so-called financial crisis is one of truth and governance. Call it systemic, if that's precise enough.

I have not read (yet) the 1984 course by Foucault, which was published recently, but I can't wait to, except I'm afraid of its demanding character, content and style. Whatever Foucault said about himself, about philosophy and whatever people say about Foucault, I sense he was kind of a prophet, speaking the truth. If I have it right, his explanation for the failure of the old Greek democracy was that truth-speaking was not possible. To me that sounds strangely familiar, as I think of institutions, including churchly ones, and society at large.

Affaire à suivre....