Anticipation..is making me wait...

March 20, 2005 7:16 AM

In Neverwhere Neil Gaiman describes a Christian abbot thusly: The abbot had known that this day would bring pilgrims. The knowledge was part of his dreams; it surrounded him, like the darkness. So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. Is anyone aware of any Christian teaching that anticipation is to be avoided? To modern ears Gaiman's passage sounds so be-here-now Buddhist. I am aware of the passage in Matthew where Jesus says "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself," which is pretty explicit, but has this notion ever been taken up and turned into formal doctrine by any branch of the church, or has any historically important theologian ever grabbed this particular ball and run with it?
posted by jfuller to religion & philosophy (7 comments total)

Therefore, be attentive to time and the way you spend it. Nothing is more precious. This is evident when you recall that in one tiny moment heaven may be gained or lost. God, the master of time, never gives the future. He gives only the present, moment by moment, for this is the law of the created order, and God will not contradict himself in his creation.
—The Cloud of Unknowing

There is no process of becoming in God, but only a present moment, that is a becoming without a becoming, a becoming-new without renewal.... All that is in God is an eternal present-time without renewal.
—Meister Eckhart

Now, those aren't quite what you're looking for. Eckhart was denounced by the pope as a heretic, and The Cloud of Unknowing isn't official doctrine either. But it looks like the medieval Christian mystics, at least, were throwing around "be-here-now"-ish ideas.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:53 AM on March 20, 2005

If you want still more information about it after getting your answers here, you might consider posting the question to Neil Gaiman's FAQ; he frequently answers reader questions in his blog. You can check out the kinds of answers he gives here; questions are in bold.
posted by Tuwa at 8:29 AM on March 20, 2005

Pretty much all the religions' mystics end up sounding pretty much the same.

The priests can disagree endlessly, though.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:12 AM on March 20, 2005

My coursework in medieval lit was sparse, but I suppose that the above passage could connect to the sinfulness of sloth or acedia -- spiritual torpor, a sense of disconnectedness from purpose. It's a bit of a stretch, but there is a way in which the idea that the abbot's "waiting" is sinful is analogous to the condemnation of moral inactivity that is linked (in medieval Christianity) to melancholy.

But there's the rub -- this seems more like earnest expectation, not melancholy. In most representations of this that I've seen, it's more like a slackening of spiritual purpose (the monk who loses the desire to pray, for example) that is really at issue with acedia.
posted by BT at 2:23 PM on March 20, 2005

There is a well-known phrase attributed to the eighteenth-century Jesuit Jean Pierre de Caussade, 'the sacrament of the present moment', which basically means that everything we need is available to us at this very moment, so that we have no need to look nostalgically back to the past or longingly forward to the future. The same idea seems to underlie Eliot's famous lines in Burnt Norton: 'what might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present'.
posted by verstegan at 4:08 PM on March 20, 2005

I would also suggest existentialism. To them, humans have a special mode of existence, we have athe freedom to choose what we want in life, something that is not given to natural objects. Faith is taking action, to actively choose; bad faith is waiting for something to happen, taking no action in life, living as a natural object. Having faith is to have faith in the world and all that has been given to us in the present moment.
posted by scazza at 8:38 PM on March 20, 2005

There is an idea in Christianity that your time is not your own, which is the source of the idea that wasting time is actually a sin. The beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism says "What is thy only comfort in life and death? That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ" and this reflects pretty well why you need to spend your time in the best way possible.
posted by dagnyscott at 9:13 PM on March 20, 2005