meet in the middle

Waiting is like sitting on the other end of a rifle.  The barrel clicks and anticipation cackles.   Waiting is like Godo ain’t coming. But the pests on your plants triple, the dust on your desk doubles. The dissatisfaction singles you out.  Waiting is the gap between wrestling with what could be and arrested by what isn’t.  Waiting is expecting it to be different when you’re the same. 

Waiting is looking for god in all the wrong places.

I’ve felt like a failed minister. A peripheral photographer. A not-even writer. A sustainability coach that doesn’t fit into a 401K.  A teacher not tenured. An insecurely attached partner.  As if a job, place, man, ring or thing makes me who I am. As if anything outside is in. 

I was the one who lost sight of god. 

I’m reminded of the presence that both feels intuitive and big enough that it’s beyond inclusive, elusive enough that one forgets, universal enough that it never leaves. The reminder comes while sitting on an empty Episcopal church pew after the service I didn’t attend, has come to an end. When the community members take down the Christmas ornaments and the dark ornate wood interior resembles a gothic log cabin and my father’s carpentry. When there is a soft bustling of activity that creates a halo of protection around the anonymity and acceptance of my body on the pew. No questions. No one asks why are you here. A home in the cold windy city of possibility. 

I’m reminded on the stool at a bar, eyes closed, body absorbing the melody of breath through brass.  Lost in a trance, I forget anyone is next to me.  The proud saxophonist father played a composition written by his teenage son that melted my heart.  How love transcends. How vibration soberly lifts molecules off of bar stools in Brooklyn. 

I’m reminded when my body moves in ways unplanned. When movement feels like I’m part of a revolutionary movement.  When thoughts quiet for awhile and the sinking atoms of my skin rock back and forth in fetal position like a baby in Earth’s womb. 

I’m reminded when my body opens and receives another in synchronicity as the first ancient act anyone ever did. That life itself exists not because of robotic procreation or programmed productivity but a kind of sacred consensual communion.  

Like light bending around falling water droplets to create prisms of visible color, ministry will meet me somewhere in the middle. 

Photo: Uganda, 2012