Working Toward a Non-Impatient Presence

Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,

“How long, O Lord?” is one of the most frequently repeated laments in all of Scripture—at least twenty-five times by my count, and four times in Psalm 13 alone: “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord—for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I seek counsel in my soul, and be so vexed in my heart : how long shall mine enemies triumph over me?” The Psalmist and the Prophets ask it constantly, and not politely. How long must I suffer? How long must I wait? Even our Lord himself, on a bad day, asks, “How long must I put up with you?”—which is a startling thing to find in the mouth of God incarnate, and, I find, a bit of a consolation when I’m feeling impatient. If impatience was good enough for Jesus Christ, after all, it’s good enough for me. Whatever else the Bible is, it is not a book about naturally patient people.

I used to think I was patient until I actually had to be patient. Much of my impatience has been with myself. I have wondered for years when I will finally get my act together as a husband and a father, and the answer that keeps coming back after twenty-two years of marriage and nearly twenty years of parenthood is: “Not yet; keep trying.” I only recently learned to wash the dishes consistently, and I use the word “learned” generously. Anne jokes that for every good thing I learn to do consistently, I invariably forget to do something else. It’s funny because it’s true.

In the case of the dishes, what I actually did was set an alarm. Every night at eight o’clock my phone asks me, in capital letters, HAVE YOU WASHED THE DISHES? I’d like to consider this a spiritual discipline. And, from the Benedictine perspective of Ora et Labora, it is. (Just read anything by Esther de Waal on the subject and you’ll see what I mean.)

In the life of this parish, my impatience is larger and less easily solved by a phone alarm. I want the Cornerstone Project finished. I want the funds raised, the financing arranged, the shovels in the ground, the building built, and the debt repaid, ideally by a week from Tuesday. What I get instead is committees, approvals, diocesan processes, canon law, and fire codes. All of it necessary. None of it fast. At least the people with whom I am working on the Accessibility Atrium Working Group and the Cornerstone Campaign Continuation Committee are incredibly competent and committed—and, above all, faithful.

So I have had to revise my definition of “patience.” I used to think patience meant a settled serenity on the inside. I have learned that it is mostly perseverance on the outside: showing up, doing the next thing, keeping steady when I don’t feel steady. Not a performance of inauthentic calm, but a slow living into something I truly believe, which is that God will accomplish more than I can ask or imagine if I will simply wait on God. Rabbi Edwin Friedman, who spent his career watching families and congregations behave in remarkably similar ways, called this being a “non-anxious presence.” His point was that anxiety is contagious, and that the main task of anyone in a position of trust is to stay calm and connected and avoid passing the panic along. I don’t think of myself as an especially anxious man, so I’ll borrow his phrase and adjust it: what I am after is a “non-impatient presence.” If I can’t be a genuinely patient presence, I can at least aim to be non-impatient. And that is not something clergy alone are called to. It’s a goal for all of us, in whatever sphere we’ve been given.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of nearly twenty-five years of ordained ministry, it’s that life will rarely conform to our timetables. When it does, we should treat it as a minor miracle and thank God for that! We don’t get to call the shots, after all; God does. Our job is to discern as faithfully as we can who we need to be for one another, and what we need to do with one another, to make this world of impatient people—including ourselves—a little less so. At St. Thomas’s, that means doing our part while the slow work goes on: We have raised 69% of our goal, but we still need to work on several fronts toward the $5.6 million or so still to be raised, praying for those carrying the project through its approvals this autumn, and turning up on Sunday in the meantime, which is the oldest form of perseverance we have. I’ll be here too, waiting on the Lord, and washing the dishes at eight.

Yours in Christ’s service,

Nathan J.A. Humphrey+

VIII Rector