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This week's post has been written by Glenn Robitaille. Glenn is the founding pastor of Covenant Christian Community Church and is the Director, Ethics and Spiritual Care at Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care. We are thankful for Glenn's contribution to our community and our church family.

As we move into the fall, we would like to invite other gifted writers at Covenant to consider sending in submissions to be shared as a part of Covenant Weekly. Submissions should reflect the values of Covenant; be well written; and be between 400 and 900 words. Submissions could be personal stories, biblical reflections, teaching, or devotional in nature. Not all submissions will be used, but they will all be read and considered. If you'd like to send something for consideration, please send it to jon@covenantchurch.ca.

Creative Brooding

By Glenn Robitaille, M.Div., D.Min., RP

Director, Ethics and Spiritual Care

For people of faith prayer can be as natural as breathing.  Most people think of prayer as a solitary act performed at prescribed times and in specific ways, and it can be that; but another, more enduring form expresses itself in an ongoing dialogue that includes God in the musings and broodings of simple thinking.  In fact, people who do not necessarily believe in God or prayer often find themselves talking to God in this way.  When there is nowhere else to turn, the object of what one author called our creative brooding sometimes becomes God.

The events of our world are at times confusing. The fall of governments and the rise of terror movements, or perhaps the emergence of another school shooting all cause us to scratch our heads and wonder at the meaning of it all.  Perhaps it is the unpredictability of such events that most challenges us—images of people happily going through their lives followed by death and destruction the next.  For those caught in the terror of the moment, the prayer is likely for help; for those able to observe from a comfortable distance, the prayer has more to do with “why?”

“Help” and “why” are two of the more common words heard in difficult times.  Feelings of helplessness and confusion are part of the experience of tragedy and we are not very comfortable with either.  We want to be delivered.  We want answers to our questions and comfort in our suffering. The spiritual stories of all the major religions are filled with images of deliverance and revelation—the “Chosen People” are led to the “promised land” by pillars of cloud and fire; a holy man sits under a tree and is enlightened.  We spend a lot of our time looking for pillars of fire and waiting for answers to arrive.  Sometimes it feels like we are doing a lot of looking and waiting!

Great thinkers all down through the ages have encouraged us to see this time of waiting as a good thing.  Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, suggested, “Are you able to sit still and wait for your mud to settle?”  Huang-po, a ninth century Chinese Zen Master spoke about wisdom saying, “Chase it and it eludes you; run from it and it is always there.”  The Psalmist said, “Be still and know that I am God.”  We find it very difficult to “wait for our mud to settle,” or to not “chase” after solutions, or to “be still.”  We see the reality of waiting as an accommodation by default—a necessary evil.  We have no choice, so we wait.

While some questions never are answered and some brooding never creative, recognizing the value of waiting is an important part of the process of becoming whole.  So much of our lives is spent reacting and responding to superficial impressions and desires, and much of our suffering is a result of neglecting due diligence.  Simply put, we don’t talk about it with real depth.  We don’t dialogue with ourselves or with God.  We don’t slow down and ask questions.  The simple solution of avoiding suffering through dulling it, running from it, or denying it is too easily embraced.  We receive no end of encouragement from popular culture to solve our angst through taking something, doing something, or changing something.  In the age of the microwave, microcomputer and cell phone, we are not fond of waiting for much of anything.  Instant gratification is in.  Food is mere fuel, books are passé, and absence is not tolerated to make the “heart grow fonder.”

Value exists in confusion.  It was in “sitting in the dust heap” thinking and praying and being bewildered that Job eventually found his answers.  Sometimes an ash pit is just an ash pit; at other times it is the hearth from which the phoenix rises… “as the sparks fly upward.” 

As one wise person said, we can either “curse the darkness or light a candle,” but either way, the darkness exists.  The question is how are we going to face it?  Sometimes the best we can do is wait and, in the waiting, muse and brood to ourselves, or out loud.  Some call it reflection or conversation; people of faith call it prayer.

As often as not, prayer is about the quiet side of conversation—being a part of the listening and questioning and waiting.  God occupies a significant horizon in that conversation as the source of hope and strength; our role is to wait, and in the waiting to become.

It is a good strategy considering the average person will spend seven years of his or her life waiting in line.  Waiting is an inescapable discipline if the soul. In one way or another, we all get religion!