Transcript of the Video Above

Daily reflections for Lenten Easter, written by Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI.

Henri Nouwen used to say that 98% of our lives are spent in waiting at a superficial level. We experience this in the amount of time we spend waiting at checkout counters in airports, for buses, for somebody to arrive, or for something to end.

Our workday, a class, a church service, a bout with the flu. But that is a superficial part of it. More important is the fact that almost all the time we are waiting for a fuller season for our lives.
Rarely do we have what Nouwen calls a fully pregnant moment. Namely, a moment when we can say to ourselves, right now, I don’t want to be any other place with any other persons or doing anything else than what I’m doing right now.

Isn’t it rather stoic and joy killing to accept that life is 98% about waiting? On the contrary, to accept the this is not masochistic but freeing.

My parents generation did this by each day saying the prayer, for now we live mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Praying like this didn’t turn them into cold stoics.

Instead, knowing that the fuller season for which we wait cannot be found here, they were able to enjoy, perhaps more so than can our own generation, the simple joys that are possible.