Action in Waiting: Horticulture and the Kingdom of God

The following is an Advent reflection prepared by Theresa Schafer, a Volunteer living in the Little Village Community. Theresa is a teacher at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School in Little Village and she shared her story at Amate House’s Las Posadas evening of reflection on December 14, 2016.


I live at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School. I spend my days split between room 102, room 301, and the Library. Tepeyac is my Amate House placement, therefore my home. Aaaaaand all of what home means: joys and sorrows, belonging and figuring out how to belong, growing and challenging and being challenged: all of that happens there, on the daily. Today I’d like to talk to you about what this home has taught me about the daily and horticulture and the Kingdom of God.


Every now and then, when days are really bleh and I can’t seem to make sense of why on earth I have found myself in a teaching position; when although I like teaching, I have never felt like teaching is my particular calling; when the last class I taught refused to quiet down for what felt like hours, and I finally called on one girl and thought she was going to contribute something to our meaningful discussion, but instead she asked if she could go to get a drink of water, and all I wanted to do was give up and walk out of the room and hide, but instead I say yes you may but please come back quickly, and then I turn my attention back to a group of girls who really just want sleep and don’t want to talk about the connection between feminism and biblical interpretation or the value of social justice; when I spend the next three minutes trying to get them as excited as I am about the breaking news on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the feedback I’m getting is an assortment of slightly cross-eyed and sleepy stares…

…when these things happen, I have to mentally and emotionally fortify myself by falling back on two simple words: planting seeds.

Theresa shares her Advent reflection with the Amate House family at
Our Lady of Tepeyac High School on December 14th.

When I was in college, one of the prayers that came across my path was the Archbishop Romero Prayer by Bishop Kenneth Untener. I came to love this prayer because it was practical.  It acknowledged limits, and rejoiced in their invitation. And most of all, it spoke to me of faith. By faith, I don’t really mean beliefs, but faithfulness. Dan Berrigan said, “Faith is rarely where your head is at. Nor is it where your heart is at. Faith is where your ass is at!” But I’ll get back to that. First, here’s the core of that prayer.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

All of this: limits and promise, tension and hope, acknowledgement and grace, patience and humility, all of it is wrapped up in the profession of teaching. And in the middle of an exhausting moment at Tepeyac, the words planting seeds echo in my mind and remind me that I am called to simple love and active waiting and diligent persistence.

Volunteers gather with alumni, staff and friends for Las Posadas evening
of reflection at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School.

I was in a meeting with my supervisor, Ms. Noonan, sharing the story of a particularly difficult afternoon, looking for some wisdom and guidance, when she said: “you know, one of the most difficult things about teaching is that you may NEVER see the results of your efforts. You just have to pour in, and then trust.”

You just have to show up; you just have to plant seeds.

And so it is with Advent. And so it is with the Kingdom of God.

Waiting for the coming of Christ and building the Kingdom of God is a magnificent enterprise, as the prayer above said. Sometimes, it is so far beyond me that I doubt that all this work is actually contributing to something real. It’s uncommon for any of us to have those epiphany moments where all of the puzzle pieces of our lives fall into place and we can see the whole picture. Instead, it comes back to faithfulness in the work, and faithfulness to the people in our lives. And in the face of doubting that this Kingdom, “beyond our vision,” is actually being built, what can we do? Narrow our vision.

See, the other wonderful bit of advice that Ms. Noonan shared with me was the absolute necessity of holding onto the little things, the little moments of victories in teaching. When I can remember to, I jot a note down when a class discussion was really engaging; when one student had that lightbulb look on her face; when an essay was powerful; when a student was willing to share something deep with the class; when an answer made me laugh out loud . . . . bear with me as I get a little carried away with the horticulture metaphor- those are moments when just a LITTLE green sprout pokes its head through the dirt. And you can SEE IT! And the angels rejoice and sing GLORIA! Well, maybe they don’t. But I sure do.

It’s not every day that I am able to see the beauty in the tension of waiting for those moments of victory. It’s not every day that I can humbly accept the fact that in many cases, I may never see the sprouts when they finally grow. It’s not every day that the daily “showing up” of faithfulness makes sense to me. But Advent is the perfect season for me to refocus my spirit with the gently whispered mantra “planting seeds, planting seeds,” and lean into the tension, acceptance, and faithfulness that both waiting for Christmas, and waiting for the Kingdom of God requires.