POINTSOFVIEW | AT HOME ON EARTH
By Kyle Kramer
The Challenge of Waiting
Kyle Kramer
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ne of my favorite lines of Scripture is Isaiah chapter 43, verse 19: “See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the wilderness I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.” I’ve returned to this verse at various times in my life, usually when I have been either going through a personal transition or discerning one. Advent is the time when we anticipate the new thing God brings into the world through the incarnation of Christ in the baby Jesus. It’s also a special time for us to discern what new thing God may be bringing into our own lives, in our own time—how Christ is born in us. THE CHALLENGES OF BIRTH
For my part, a new thing feels long overdue. I dream of the world that Pope Francis described in “Laudato Si’”: a world of “integral ecology,” a world where we live more in harmony with each other and the rest of the natural world—not only so that God’s will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, but also for the blunt fact that our survival as a species depends on it. In fits, starts, and glimpses, I feel as if I’m beginning to perceive how God is making a way through our present wilderness. Something new definitely wants and needs to be born.
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But birth is rarely easy. I haven’t gone through the pain of labor and childbirth, but I’ve been at my wife’s side as she has brought our three children into the world. I always wondered whether I’d be tough enough to do what she managed to do. If human birth is so difficult and fraught with peril and uncertainty, how can we possibly expect that the birth of new social, economic, and environmental relationships would be easy? The early Christians, experiencing persecution and martyrdom, certainly didn’t delude themselves this way. So if our faith calls us to a new thing and that it indeed is springing forth, and if new births are filled with challenge, how do we help to midwife this challenging birth? MARY, OUR TEACHER
Mary is one of the best guides we have through this journey of new birth. Mary’s journey toward Jesus’ birth began with her fiat, her willingness to say yes to the plan and promise of God. Like Mary, our own faithfulness to God’s new thing means saying our own trusting yes, aligning ourselves with the divine will, even in the midst of so much uncertainty regarding how it might come about. And this isn’t a onetime yes. Every day, in many different ways, we need to keep saying yes, to keep reminding ourselves of
TOP: BORCHEE/ISTOCK; BOTTOM: GEORGE PETERS/ISTOCK
EarthandSpiritCenter.org
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TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; TOP: BORCHEE/ISTOCK
Kyle is the executive director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion. He serves as a Catholic climate ambassador for the US Conference of Catholic Bishopssponsored Catholic Climate Covenant and is the author of Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living (Franciscan Media, 2021). He speaks across the country on issues of ecology and spirituality. He and his family spent 15 years as organic farmers and homesteaders in Spencer County, Indiana.
