Waiting in line can be good for your soul.

Right off the bat, I’ve got to say: stay with me. Reading the above sentence, you may either think that I’m bonkers or that I’m going to write about how we can learn patience while standing in line (or sitting in traffic, which is kinda like being in line). I’m not bonkers, though, and while we can always learn a bit about patience, I want to write about something else.

Normally, when we stand in line, we think we have two options: to stand around impatiently or to day dream. Normally, we’re in such a rush and have so many things to do that we can’t help but be impatient. We notice things that slow the line down, we urge people mentally to get on with it, or we just grumble to ourselves. Unless we have someone fun to stand in line with, we’ve only got ourselves, and being with ourselves when we’re put out is never too much fun.

Back before I had children to watch and keep safe, I invented a game for myself to help me from being crabby in line. I didn’t have a name for it, but you could call it “What didn’t I notice?” I would look around whatever room I was in and try to find things that I hadn’t noticed before. Sometimes I would pick out a candy bar or a bag of chips that I hadn’t seen when getting in line at the supermarket, or a sign for workers to be safe behind the counter at an ice cream store. That was kind of fun and rather telling: most of the things in a room are kind of visual background noise. We observe them but don’t really see them.

I also found that I didn’t really notice people. I mean, I noticed that they were there, but I didn’t really take them all in. I especially didn’t look at their faces and their expressions. Now, most people aren’t too excited about standing in line, so most people look kind of bored or tired or listless, but there is always someone who has bright, shining eyes, as if they were daydreaming about the beaches of some tropical island or reliving a time when they went sledding on a big hill as a kid. Or maybe it’s just the light of their presence, or the light of God, shining through. Seeing them kind of made me want to be like them, though consciously trying to make our eyes shine with the light of God is doomed from the start. That kind of thing isn’t willed. It’s a natural result of our inner dispositions.

And so I got to thinking about my spirit and the internal workings of myself. I’m a priest, and when I preach I often urge people to open themselves to God in their daily lives. Don’t just think about God when you come to church on Sunday mornings, in other words; remember God all throughout the week. One of the things that my own tradition (Anglicanism) teaches is “remembrance”, or calling up a memory of God’s presence throughout the day. Normally we do this through the Divine Office or remembering traditional prayers. Some Christians will recall Bible verses that they’ve memorized. We also have, however, the rather bald presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the reality of being taught by the mere presence of God.

We all have a spiritual sense, though we don’t always talk about it. We have eyes to see, ears to hear, mouths to speak, and all the rest, but we also have spirits that can reach out to the world around us and the world inside of us and discern things that are going on. We can sense the spiritual health of a person by looking in their eyes. Not always, and never perfectly, but we can sense the health and even just the presence of another soul near us.

We can also do a lot with the spiritual sense to open ourselves to the world around us. My little game of “What didn’t I notice?” is an image of this, but sometimes little things like noticing the things that share the same space as us can lead us deeper into our spiritual lives. So often we’re bent over ourselves and our thoughts, and more often than not we’re grieving over some problem in our lives or in the world. When I’m driving, I get so angry about bad and unsafe drivers that I miss a lot of the scenery that passes my by. I have this beautiful drive in to church in the morning – it’s all forested and on a road that not many people use. How often do I miss it, because of some problem in my life or politics or a worry about the life of the church?

Often, we try to see God in the world around. We look around and say, “Well, where are you God? What are you trying to say to me? How are you trying to speak to me?” And what we don’t do, or what we don’t do enough, is simply look and simply be. “Taste and see that the Lord is Good,” as is sung in Psalm 34. Why can’t we just taste the world? Why can’t we just look out and take it all in and let it all be and stop trying so hard?

Part of the reason why is, of course, that we need God and we seek for God. Often, we poor pilgrims on the way are searching for God because of some need that we have or some hurt that has fallen upon us. We don’t experience God’s presence, and so we seek God out. This is good and natural. But part of seeking out God is tasting the world. Not the World, capital W, but the world, Creation, the thing that God said was “very good.” Taste is. Check it out. Stop searching and just look. Experience. Be.

And do it while you’re in line, because there’s not much else to do :).