waiting on a messiah

When I stopped believing in the pope, I started believing in Advent, in what it means to wait and wait and look forward and prepare and prepare. I've seen it, I've seen people who have spent their whole lives preparing for the coming that hasn't come. In Russia they are called "the believers." I watched them in their head coverings with their icons held high, marching around the cathedral, half-expecting Jesus to be inside when the altar boys threw open the iron-clad doors. There was no Jesus, just an American girl in a borrowed hood astounded that she could be so far from home and still feel like she'd never left Pittsburgh.

How many lifetimes have been wasted in passive waiting? in fleeing the sanctuary to escape discomfort? It was not that I ignored the church, it was that I didn't aid the gypsy children on the subway. They laughed as they begged; a little girl with baby in her arms and her brother with a coke he'd found in the trash. Where do they sleep at night? In the underpasses? On the corners as the church maintains her spotless sanctuaries? And all I did was toss them spare rubbles.

This cannot be the church of a true christ, this church who gave into Stalin and to poverty and to civic oppression. Nor can the Roman Pope be the arm of a true god, this Vatican who doles judgements instead of bread, regulation instead of hope. If Christ had truly come, would he not have brought with him justice? Would he not have at least bought the Russian boy a fresh coke?

I can only conclude this means we're still waiting, that the time of redemption is not at hand by earthly standards and that some promises take a while to fulfill. O come, O come, Emmanuel. I do not dread the end of the age, the coming of a messiah, only that the time before he arrives will be wasted fruitlessly wishing.

So many of the believers keep their hands idle pointing out chariots in the sky. Why not build a kingdom, a house, or just a tiny apartment where three children could sleep when they emerge from the subway?