{"id":1593,"date":"2024-03-09T11:22:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T17:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2024-03-09T11:22:22","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T17:22:22","slug":"waiting-worship-at-the-bus-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/?p=1593","title":{"rendered":"Waiting Worship at the Bus Stop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY Sabine Peterka<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrambling with some F\/friends one Sunday morning to be on time to Meeting for Worship, one of them commented, \u201cIt\u2019s funny that we\u2019re trying not be late to a meeting that is just waiting; it\u2019s not like anyone is waiting for us<\/em>, but everyone is waiting and we\u2019ll join them in quietly waiting whenever we get there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to have waiting worship?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a frequent bus-rider, I spend lots of time waiting and I wonder if bus stops can be sacred spaces. They certainly don\u2019t seem holy at first: You stand on a corner in blazing hot sun in the summer or unshoveled slush in the winter. On the off-chance there is a shelter with a bench, it reeks of pee. You check the MCTS bus tracker on your phone and instead of the \u201c5 minutes away\u201d you naively expected, it just says \u201cDelayed.\u201d And now your journey is in the bardo. The waiting begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the bus stop, finding the joy and meaning in waiting often feels difficult. I like to challenge myself to a solitary game of \u201cI Spy\u201d as a way to pay attention to the landscape: I spy a sign of climate change, I spy systematic government neglect, I spy a marketing trick. <\/em>Sometimes there are other people in waiting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A child dancing across the street to no music I can hear, flinging himself around parking meters, collapsing exhausted in a strip of grass before jumping to his feet again to prance up and down the sidewalk until his mom emerges from a building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A woman in the dark asking me to help her get a screwdriver in her glove \u2013 a secret weapon of self-defense \u2013 while she tells me of her trauma. After we get the glove situated, she touches my hair and when I flinch, she says, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, I won\u2019t use the screwdriver on you! I\u2019d defend you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A neighbor on election day reminding me to vote, if not for myself, then on behalf of his little granddaughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A kid climbing onto my bike seat (yes, I finally got brave enough to learn how to use the bus bike rack!) while his mom tries to keep his three siblings from running off too far or into any oncoming traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            An old guy telling me how the University has changed the neighborhood. He lived in an apartment on that now-empty lot until it was bought out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A fellow passenger and I: strangers feeling like action movie co-stars as we get off one bus and run through a major construction zone to make our transfer to another line, only to realize it\u2019s been delayed. \u201cYou have a pretty smile,\u201d he says, ruining the moment because I\u2019m not into meet-cutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could tell story after story from my time at bus stops; there\u2019s a lot to take in when I can see through the boredom. In waiting, I have a chance to notice something overlooked or make an unexpected connection or simply bear witness to the scene around me. Whether in the silence before a message in the Meeting House or the time on the corner before the bus arrives, the waiting holds something of its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does it mean to have waiting worship?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-march-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1596,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}