texting, waiting

Today I finally made time to go to a local text study for clergy women (I think we should post a handwritten sign on the door: NO BOYS ALLOWED). Text study is one thing I've really missed in this place, since there is no organized study that I'm aware of in the area. The women's study is only about 10 miles away, but since there's usually a fair amount of traffic involved, it does take awhile to get there. Worth it, though. I've always been the only woman (or, for awhile, one of two) in my local clergy groups. And though I grew up with brothers and lots of male cousins, and so am not much bothered by being the lone female, I have to admit - it's nice to have a change.

We were talking about the first Sunday of Advent, a season I currently love and loathe, for lots of reasons. The love outweighs the loathe, without a doubt, but the latter does tend to rear its ugly head at unfortunate moments. This will be my fourth Advent of still-hoping-to-get-pregnant, which is a particularly hard state of being when there are all these readings about babies showing up out of nowhere. On the one hand, those stories give me great hope and comfort. Although sometimes they just feel like a knife to the heart. Lectio torturous, of sorts.

So we were talking about the first Sunday of Advent and all its now-but-not-yet-ness, waiting for something which has already happened and is yet to be fulfilled. And I said something about how it's very different to wait for something you know is going to happen, as opposed to waiting for something that you have no guarantee will ever happen. "I suppose it's a bit like pregnancy," I said, "that you're waiting for something you know is going to happen..."

"But you don't know that," interrupted one woman. "You don't. You don't know for sure that it will happen, so you're still hoping."

So I think I hit a tender spot for her.

Which brought up something I've been thinking about for a long time now, something that Gannet Girl summarized perfectly in a comment she wrote on my last post: "The world is full of onlookers concealing whole oceans of pain."

A few years ago, I read a book called Torture and Eucharist, by William Cavanaugh. Amazing book. He writes about the 'disappearing' of people in Pinochet's Chile, about how the church was complicit, or at least largely silent, while thousands of people simply vanished from their daily lives. Eucharist, he writes, is the church making visible that which is invisible: celebrating the body and blood of Christ not just as 'long ago,' or 'not yet,' but as right now, right here. So too, he writes, is our work to be in all areas of life: that the church ought to be about the work of making visible the invisible, giving voice to the silent, re-membering those who were 'disappeared.'

I'm thinking about this work for Advent. Making visible the invisible. That the world is full of onlookers concealing whole oceans of pain. That, so often, we keep our pain invisible from others - with the result that we cause more wounds, because others don't know about the tender spots. I spoke about pregnancy as a different kind of anticipation because, from my vantage point right now, the fact of being pregnant means you have crossed the great barrier I face, and you're on the other side. I wonder if the woman who spoke up in text study might have experienced a miscarriage or a stillbirth, and so she spoke from her knowledge that even being pregnant is not a sure thing. And then there is Gannet Girl, and others like her, who know that being born doesn't protect your children from disappearing still, in one way or another. And there is the new mother in my congregation whose child arrived in their home to be fostered and then adopted, for two days of sheer joy, until they got a phone call from The Powers That Be saying the child may have siblings in the foster system, so they may need to take her away.

Sometimes pain simply cannot be shared. Not for awhile, anyway. Added to that, however, is the constant force in our culture determined to prevent us from showing our wounds to anyone. Be strong. Just do it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Be a soccer mom with lipstick, or whatever that whole fuss was. And the church goes along with it. "How are you?" we ask briskly on our way out of the sanctuary, expecting only, "Fine." Believe me: I am not about to confess my infertility grief during worship. But then again, I am only adding to a certain false pretense by not doing so.

How long, O Lord? How long do we wait? How broad is this ocean, when you cannot see the other side.

There are some questions no text study can answer, of course. But it is good not to be alone in the asking.