It has often been said that in Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, that nothing happens, twice.

Waiting is part of the essential experience of living and it is in this context that the need for immediacy in our modern life comes into conflict with our nature. Impatience demands the ’now’ result however imperfect that might be, patience allows for a more mature, considered, reflective response.

This week Francis is due to meet with his eight appointed cardinals to discuss current issues facing the Church and. hopefully, to explore the way forward, a new direction. Some have dubbed it the Vatican G8. Maybe C8+1 would be more accurate.

There have been those who have expected an instant response from Francis to the major problems we face. Instead, we have been offered indications of a changed life style, the odd phrase here or there, the open hand. And we are having to be patient.

This weekend I have been reading Tony Flannery’s new book, A Question of Conscience, a very painful book to read for it describes a period of waiting under intense pressure. He, surely, is a man who has had his fill of waiting. What does it do to you, holding on day after day, waiting for something to happen? Waking you expect a new development and by the end of the day, with little changed, you go back to bed, emotionally exhausted that nothing has happened, hopeful that you might sleep through another night. I was struck by comment that he received in an e-mail during his protracted waiting for the CDF to make up its mind. “You will have to wait to see who you are when this thing is done with you”. You see, whether we like it or not, waiting for something to happen, for a decision to be made, for a new direction to be found, changes us. Yet we will only be aware of the extent of that change when the period of waiting is over, when we can see who we are after the experience.

Between the event of Resurrection and the Coming of the Spirit there was a significant period of waiting, for what, they didn’t know. And how long the wait would be was also unknown. When we look back we can see clearly the start, remember the experience and appreciate the conclusion of a particular event. That neat package hides the anxiety and expectation felt on the way through. Later in his book Flannery also notes, reflecting on the email quoted above, “I was facing up to the fact that this sequence of events would change me and all change involves loss”

The other morning, watching the dawn breaking outside a bedroom window, I wrote this piece and a memory from the great freeze of ’47 came to mind again.

Just waiting


an orange dawn stained
the green, cloud-strewn sky
this late September.
The silent stirring of early morning
seen through an upper floor window
over dew fields.
Just waiting.

Remember then another time
of gazing across the street
through a London window in ’47,
those grey, tight, post-war years
of distant childhood,
during a long, freezing Winter
white with weeks of heavy snow.

We watched the roof-slide
when the thaw set in,
the curled lip of ice,
gutter-hung.
Just waiting.


So let’s be patient a little longer, give time for humanity to respond to the Spirit and let us learn from the waiting. It will change us.

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