Standing By

One of the hardest things in the world to do is - to do nothing.

Jesus asked his three closest friends, disciples Peter, James and John, to do just that. Just to stay awake with him. Could you do that? With nothing to busy your hands with, no task to accomplish, nothing to read or plan or analyze or solve? Can you just - be there?

Many of us avoid people who are in pain, people who are watching a loved one die, or who are very ill themselves, or who are mourning a great loss. We avoid them because we don’t know what to do. We somehow have the idea that if we don’t fix something, solve something, change something - anything - to chip the problem down to size that we are somehow inadequate, that we have failed. And so we stay away. Are we bystanders, or on standby, or “standing by”?

Bystanders are notorious for their inaction. Bystanders around the country have let crimes go on under their very eyes, failing even to raise the alarm. Bystanders shrug and walk away, saying “what could I do?” or “it’s none of my business.” Bystanders sleep through earth-shaking events, wake up and look around in bewilderment saying “What happened?” And “It’s not my fault!” Bystanders are extras, not part of the action at all.

Being “on standby” is quite another thing. The energy saver option is on, but the warm-up time is minimized. When you’re “on standby” you are ready to move. Your bag is packed, your shoes and your phone and maybe even your car are all on. If you doze it’s lightly, knowing that any minute you’ll be summoned to jump to your feet and do something, meet a need, fix a problem, act. Being “on standby” matters.

“Standing by” is something different altogether. It’s less than being “on standby,” and more. “Standing by” is less than being “on standby,” because you’re not getting ready to move. And “standing by” is more than being “on standby,” because “standing by” isn’t about being ready for the job, “standing by” is the job.

I am reading a book called A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. It is about reclaiming our internal integrity, and a vital part of that process involves learning how to be fully present with and for another person without doing anything. It is about being respectfully attentive to another person’s reality, without needing to fix or challenge or guide them. We all need this attention. Few of us know how to give it. And yet this is all that Jesus asked of his disciples, and it is what he asks of us now.

Many of us have sat with a dying person. That time and space may help us to understand what “standing by” is all about, as we accompany someone who is making perhaps the most solitary journey of all. And on this night when we remember and anticipate Jesus’ journey to the cross, I’d like to invite us all to do what the three disciples could not.

When we sit with a dying person, we gain two critical insights into what it means to “be alone together.” First, we realize that we must abandon the arrogance that often distorts our relationships - the arrogance of believing that we have the answer to another person’s problem. When we sit with a dying person, we understand that what is before us is not a “problem to be solved” but a mystery to be honored. As we find a way to stand respectfully on the edge of that mystery, we start to see that all of our relationships would be deepened if we could play the fixer role less often.

Second, when we sit with a dying person, we realize that we must overcome the fear that often distorts our relationships - the fear that causes us to turn away when the other reveals something too vexing, painful, or ugly to bear. Death may be all of this and more. And yet we hold the dying person in our gaze, our hearts, our prayers, knowing that it would be disrespectful to avert our gaze, that the only gift we have to offer in this moment is our undivided attention.

When people wait with a dying person, they know that they are doing more than taking up space in the room. But if you ask them to describe what that “more” is, they have a hard time finding the right words. And when the words come, they are almost always some variant on “I was simply being present.”

We learn to “practice presence” when we sit with a dying person - to treat the space between us as sacred, to honor the soul and its destiny. Our honoring may be wordless or perhaps mediated by speech that the dying person cannot hear. Yet this honoring somehow keeps us connected as we bear witness to another’s journey into the ultimate solitude.