Ironic Advent 2020 Meditation #6: The Problem with Waiting

 Ben Camino's Ironic Advent 2020 Meditation #6: 

the problem with waiting (after George Herbert) 

Dear reader. If you know me well, as well as most of the Jennifers know me, you'd know how inordinately I love the poetry of George Herbert. Please look him up if you don't know about him. When you have time. I didn't mean that as an imperative but as a suggestion. I know, sometimes Ben Camino is rather pushy.  

I also like Jackson Pollock, thus the image. Anyway(s), I wrote a version of this poem last year as a way of working through my Advent angst with the haunting but redemptive voice of Herbert (and perhaps Herbert's master) in my ear and guts and soul (and Kia Soul). 

So, I've taken some time today to see it again, hear it again, and think about how I can both push and pull it along to where it should be on this pilgrim path or trackless midnight desert, whichever this place upon which I rest my trunk turns out to be. 

So here it as of 10.21 (EST) on the sixth day of Advent 2020. Also, thanks for all the encouragement and generosity you have shown me. Someone said that to me today; so I'm passing it on to those of you who have done the same for me. 

May the Divine Assistance be with us always. And with our loved ones everywhere. (the closing prayer of Compline). 

the problem with waiting (after George Herbert)

the problem with waiting is the problem of misplaced focus

as in 

why am I waiting for that which I know not except by 

promise (which is to say by possibility but not yet, if ever, presence)

when a perfectly fine right now  right here

parades itself to my eyes, heart, blood and guts, and soul

and (Kia) Soul

on this path which I refuse to see as process only or 

simply pilgrimage

but instead a chance to bite sweet creation itself on the very backside of being

or to gloss my nasty text for nicer minds,

to give myself up fully to this now rather than pray for that then

I mean, to give up crying (or bellyaching as the kind giant put it) 

for the ghost of all I need that may not ever anyway be 

instead to clinch hard and wrestle all night 

with the angeldemon of the trackless midnight desert

when like an apogean voice sent down from nowhere

but stuck forever in some seventheenth-century devotional lyric

I am addressed, possessed, known well, seen through, 

washed clean of all my wallowing evasions,

invited, no, enticed to hold the bleeding hand of Love

the forever way down the endless path

to nothing but