Waiting on The Lord with The Catholic Worker

"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint"   Isa. 40:31

"Wait for the Lord; Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord."    Psa. 27:14

"For evildoers will be cut off, But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land."  Psa. 37:9


First let me say that, although I've begun with a phrase and quotes from the Bible, my reflections and writing are practical observations for anyone, regardless of their faith leanings.  You see I think the Bible is generally a self-help book, and in fact many people really interact with the Bible for the first time in a self-help sort of way, I suppose that's why the Gideons place Bibles in hotel rooms, so people when traveling and alone have a source of help.


I added The Catholic Worker to the title because yesterday I visited Casa Juan Diego, a catholic worker community in Houston, TX which prompted me to write this morning. 


What I'll attempt to do is write my thoughts on my spiritual reaction to the idea of waiting for God, and connect that to what I got from my visit yesterday, while also commenting on the value of the idea of waiting and patience for persons of any faith, or non-religion.


First, why the phrase "wait on the Lord"?  This all began a few weeks ago when I was meeting with Dan K., a local person who has a desire to start something like a catholic worker.  It's clear that part of his vision is to have a house from which to provide services.  In our conversation it came out that we should just meet and leave room for the spirit to work.  Both of us come from the faith position that God is present and if we leave room and wait for God to work then it will be clear and all we have to do is say yes and keep on the path so to speak.  So we decided to "wait on the Lord".  Then last Monday at morning prayer, the reading was from Isaiah (probably the one above) about waiting on the Lord.  Hmmmm, I'm starting to see a theme here.   Then Dan and I went to visit Louise and Mark at Casa Juan Diego and as we asked questions about starting a catholic worker house, the theme continued to come back around to "waiting for inspiration" or "patiently watching" to see what turns up.


Janie and I have been learning that intentionally waiting for God to act is difficult sometimes and I for one have a tendency to move on something before God has had a chance to act, or maybe my moving was God's act.  How does one know?  Anyway, we have also learned that when we do wait (with intention to do something well or positive, etc.) then things seem to work out.  In fact Dan and I were talking about how things seem to often work out and I liked what he said his friend Jerry says, something like "That's the way it works."  As if everyone knows that.


So waiting on the Lord is good and often difficult.


I'll give an example of how things worked out for CJD once.  The Zwicks told us that they have incorporated as a non-profit which has been very helpful for their fundraising.  They have been operating for 30 years and they feed all kinds of people and even provide rent for people who need it.  It seems like their operation must take quite a bit of money, and they always seem to work it out.  They started without non-profit status, and then one day about two years into their operations, a lawyer friend asked if they'd like to be a non-profit and then got them all set up.  Just like that.   They told more stories like that and in fact they have a book full of stories called Mercy Without Borders.


Now, as a sociologist and a counselor, I'd like to comment on the Bible as a self-help book.  Waiting on the Lord is a message about patience which is very helpful most times.  You see above some quotes about patience.  There all kinds of great self-help lessons in the Bible.  I think that a person can totally learn from the writings of the people who wrote the Bible whether it's the inspired Word of God or not.  That person can learn about humility, patience, tolerance, love, etc.  That person can also learn about greed, lust, power, hate and other vices and how to grow the positive and counter the negative.


I'll be posting more about the catholic worker project that starts with waiting on God.  Hope you read and comment.  


Martin

Welcome to my blog

here I am, blogging. Recently, I was invited to Pay It Forward with a homemade gift to a friend. As I considered just what to make for her, I was struck that I only thought of "homemade" as things I couldn't do, i.e. build a photo frame with a nice calligraphy quote inside, or knit a sweater or crochet a shawl. When I started thinking of things I could do without learning how, I began to minimize their "homemadeness". When I concocted a facial spritzer in a plastic bottle, I thought, "Well, plastic isn't homemade," and "I just combined some things I bought, I didn't grow the witch hazel and roses for rosewater," etc. Then it came to me: everything we have is just a re-use of what the Creator has already made and gifted us. oh. yeah. and...thanks!

The States, Excerpts: Playing for Chattanooga TN Homeless

"War Is Over" sung by The States ("When War Is Done")

The In and the Out

Living in an RV can be sometimes boiled down to two things, in and out.  Living in around 200 square feet of space with a reported 71 square feet of outside storage, requires that you think twice about what you bring in and be quick about bringing out what you don't need or use.  Other things that come in are food, which we prepare and eat.  We often play music at farmers markets when we travel and are given food and other products for playing. Since we are careful about how much food we can store in the motor home, especially fresh food, we tailor our meal planning to what we get in.  Therefore the turnover of in to out is rapid and space saving.  I might mention however we do have about 5 lbs of whole bean coffee from Cloud Forest Initiatives and about 4 lbs left of our decaf ground from the same folks.  Well we have our priorities.   We like buying the "Fairly Traded With Dignity-Naturally Grown Without Chemicals" coffee from Thomas.

Now, speaking of coffee and in and out, we also have water coming in, either through a connection to a drink safe garden hose and outside spigot (city water) or pumped in and stored in a 43 gallon fresh water tank and supplied with a 12 volt direct current pump from the tank to the shower, kitchen sink, lavatory sink, or toilet.  Right now, because the weather folks are threatening a hard freeze for the next few days, we are disconnected from the water spigot and just getting our water from the fresh tank.  We also have a 6 gallon water heater in this system that operates on lp gas or electricity.

The water from the sinks or shower goes into a 41 gallon gray water tank where it can be stored until "dumped" into a sewer system or a "dump station".  Most RV parks have a sewer drain pipe right at the site so you can just dump the tanks when you need to.  The black water tank or the toilet wastewater tank (as the brochure calls it) or the Xe tank as we call it (named for the former Blackwater Security, guns for hire agency) holds 36 gallons of Xe which I define as a combination of pee, poop and water mixed with a few chemicals (which in our case the latter are safe for the environment.)

So, particularly in this case, you can see the importance of paying attention to the ins and outs.  Usually we can go around a week before we have to dump the two holding tanks.  The guidance is to dump the Xe first then the gray water, that way the gray or cleaner water rinses away the excess Xe. (which any real peace activist would want to do)  We can stretch this a little by using urinals for night soil and then feeding earth somewhere, catching rainwater for washing and flushing when we need to, catching the dish rinse water and giving that to earth, then limiting our shower time.  We know we need to shower when we start noticing funny looks from the next table at the coffee shop.

Having shared all of the above, I'd offer the "paying attention to the ins and outs of life" as a method of spiritual practice in self awareness.  This can also be used as a method of saving money, losing weight, recovering from addictive behaviors, etc.  It's all about ins and outs.  Thanks for reading this far;  I'd love to hear your own stories of the ins and outs.

By the way, we also learned that when living in an RV full time, when you have to get something out or put something in the fridge, do it quickly.  You can do this by memorizing where things are and go and then open grab (or place) and close.  Bye for now!!