Seeds, Waiting, and Patience
The First Sunday of Advent
Reflection By Lisa Senuta
A seed knows how to wait.
- Hope Jaren, Lab Girl
In the beginning there is a seed, a thought, a spark, a light, a word; Advent is the time before the birth of Jesus Christ. You could say it is the germination moment of the new life of peace he revealed.
Most of us skip Advent. The season is brief and busy and Christmas seems like the real goal anyway. And yet, like a seed in the fertile ground waiting and waiting, hidden beneath the surface of anxious scriptures predicting final judgment, Advent is rich with spiritual guidance.
It is fair to say that we are not generally good at waiting. One click and we can purchase something that will be at our doorstep the next day. Within the stories and themes of Advent is the value of patience for growth, wholeness, and peace.
Hope Jahren, in Lab Girl, writes about seeds in a way that helps me to understand patience. “A seed knows how to wait. Most seeds wait for at least a year before starting to grow; a cherry seed can wait for a hundred years no problem. What exactly each seed is waiting for is known only to that seed. Some unique trigger-combination of temperature-moisture-light and many other things is required to convince a seed to jump off the deep end and take its chance—to take its one and only chance to grow.”
The predictable human need for patience in traffic, with a child, or waiting in line are moments of rush and weariness. The wisdom of the humble seed teaches that patience is not about the thing we urgently want to hurry up and happen. Patience is about growth.
Our chronic need for more patience reveals a desire for ease and gratitude in ordinary life. Everyone says, “I need more patience,” because most of us put off our journey toward becoming whole in one way or another.
Living Compass invites us to slow down and pay attention to the climate of our entire lives, listening like a seed for the “unique triggers” for our genuine becoming.
Civil rights activist, chaplain, and mystic Howard Thurman said it another way: “There is in every person that which waits, waits, waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself. There is that in every person that waits—waits and listens—for the sound of the genuine in other people. And when these two sounds come together, this is the music God heard when He said, “Let us make [humankind] in our image.”
The moment we are waiting for in daily life is the same moment God is waiting for in humankind. The “sound of the genuine” reveals the ripe moment in which to say “yes” to God. Inside all of our impatience is God’s invitation to trust and to grow in all our circumstances.
Enter the fertile time of Advent, “jump off the deep end and take a chance to grow,” for your assent to divine action is inextricably connected to the world’s becoming a peaceful flourishing place of love and wholeness.
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Follow along with us this Advent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Carolyn Karl, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.
In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.