Suffice to say, I had plenty of time on my hands before the doctor was able to see me. (And no, I not about to complain about having to wait... and I am also not about to talk about the need to be patient when it is not your/my turn).
While I sat in the waiting room, I spent some time reading. Today I read some selections from Wendell Berry.
Truthfully, I first encounter Berry's writing while I was working on my doctoral thesis at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. My cohort members and I did not appreciate his work and we felt it was out of place in the class that we were taking. We were in a class on pastoral leadership and his essays were about agrarian lifestyles and choices. We could not see the connection.
Years later I have grown to appreciate Berry's wisdom and the slow tempo by which he develops his thesis.
So sitting in the waiting room and watching the room empty and the fill again and again, Berry's words "The Body and The Earth" spoke to me.
We are so busy trying to fix and to do everything that we seldom stop and stay. . . Wondering when will it be my turn, literally, we stop being present and choose to just "be." As our attention wanes so does, as another author put it so well, our ability to ask the Lord, "Help me to stay [here] well." Which I take to mean, "help me to dwell in this space as you meant me to."
I sat in that waiting room for almost 40 minutes. I tried as hard as I could just to 'stay well' but I am not sure I succeeded. I kept wondering when would it be my turn. A few times I tried to pray for the others people in the room but those prayers devolved quickly as the door opened and someone else's name was called.
Perhaps this is something that we do together. . . what would it look like for you to "stay well?"
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