Waiting Room

With the appearance of spring and the end of planting we enter into the time of waiting for the garden to grow. I watch daily as the salad greens and kale in my garden slowly grow. When waiting, one never knows if one’s efforts have been successful. In life, we all, especially if one is poor, do a lot of waiting. Just today I waited in my car when I drove my friend on some errands. I waited in line for Brewer tickets. Being good at waiting is difficult. But with practice, waiting can be a good time, a time to read or reflect, to listen to music or news or a time to simply relax and do nothing. At least this year while I wait for my own garden to grow I have the DMZ garden to build and plant. But still I am impatient and want things done now on my time schedule.

In Holy Week of the Church year the time for waiting is between Good Friday, the death and burial of Jesus, and Easter Sunday, the Resurrection. When I visited the beautiful land of Guatemala a few years ago on a trip, my pictorial diary was called Buried in Guatemala. This April I visited Venezuela and am calling my pictorial essays that I am working on now Risen in Venezuela. Both countries were full of joyful persons, poor but with hope. However, in Guatemala it was in the joy of knowing that suffering and death is not in vain and in Venezuela it was the joy of resurrected revolution.

In a garden there is time for death and resurrection — the dying of the seeds and the rising of the plants with food. However, as in life, most of the time in the garden is filled with waiting. Waiting is natural and being good at it is a blessing. Maybe this is why Jesus said, “Blessed are the Poor”. Poor persons need to wait a lot, waiting for health care, waiting for education, waiting for opportunity, and someone good at waiting is certainly blessed.

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