Reflection
Most of us find waiting difficult. Unlike the farmers in the second reading, we live far removed from the processes of soil and harvest with their dramatic lessons in the virtue of patience. Instead of tending to crops and animals, most of us are tending to our own exhaustion from modern life. As we’re confronted daily by violations to human dignity, escalating conflict and deepening polarization, being told to wait seems not only unwise, but also unjust.
I took comfort recently from reading Zoe Schlanger’s The Light Eaters which explores the fascinating and emerging field of study known as plant intelligence. She unfurls the magnificent capabilities plants have not only to spin their existence from the sun, but also to see and hear, communicate, learn, and may even have what could be called memory. Through scientific detail and poetic curiosity, she invites us to look at plants, and perhaps everything else, with new eyes.
Writing about the vernalization process, whereby a plant must experience a period of cold temperature to trigger its ability to flower and reproduce, Schlanger reflects “perhaps most instructive of all is that plants know how to wait, how to endure the inhospitable, knowing their time has not yet come but will, and that their flourishing is not a question of whether but when.”
Knowing how to wait is a survival skill for plants as much as it is a spiritual discipline for us. We have much to learn from our photosynthesizing kin. I don’t know what plants “know” so that they can have this hopeful posture. But I do know that it speaks to me about what Advent, and perhaps life, is all about.
Vernalizing plants slow down, conserve their energy for only essential tasks and remain vigilant for the right conditions in which to bloom. And bloom they most assuredly will. I want to model their wisdom, cautious of my tendency toward hyperactivity at this time of year (not to mention James’ point about complaining about others being a waste of precious energy.)
Being patient does not mean throwing up our hands in resignation in the face of cruelty or injustice. Rather, it’s about slowing down to focus our energies on what’s essential. For me, that means preserving my energies to prayerfully renew my hope in God’s liberatory promise of flourishing for our communities. On this Gaudate Sunday, we can rejoice with confidence and certainty of God’s promise coming into full bloom.
Erin Bishop, MDiv
Director of Mission & Center for Christian Spirituality