Advent-ageous – Stephen T Berg

It's early and dark. In the south-east there is a place were the sun will come up, should it choose. Indications are good. So I wait for the first signs of brightening behind the city-scape. I wait.

Winter waits. The soil of summer-fallow waits, bulbs wait, bamboo is excellent at waiting, geese wait until the time is right. Beavers don't abide waiting, but orb weavers don't seem to mind. They spin and wait as long as it takes. The earth spins too, waiting its equinox.

But light bulbs, street lights, clocks, little chips in computers, never wait and will never care to wait. And we use them and anything else we can think of to train the waiting out of our lives.
The world of industry is bringing waiting to an end. Industry and commerce keep company with the future. Corporations race each other to see how far they can project themselves into the future, or how much of it they can drag into the present, which destroys both.

There is madness here that we've normalized. Because life, our second womb, is about waiting. Waiting, not like Estrogon and Vladimir (remember?), but waiting without excessive effort in acceptance of a serial now. Impatience has nothing to do with waiting.

Advent is the season of specific expectation. It’s a rendezvous and tea with a knowing midwife. A time for rekindled waiting—should we see to turn this to our soul’s advancement.
 
And in Advent, we wait in a commemorative way, for the birth of Jesus. As people of the paschal mystery we are always anticipating some kind of birth and some kind of resurrection, in the knowledge that there was a birth and that the son has risen. We wait as one waits for dawn.

I can't see it yet but soon east will grow orange. Behind the berm of buildings across the North Saskatchewan high on the bank, the trees will turn skeletal as light strengthens behind them.

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