WAITING

Dream of Helen Luke, age 88, recorded in her journal: I dreamed that I saw three (or perhaps four) tall containers of plain glass-- too tall for even the tallest flowers, not tall enough to be holders of umbrellas. They were of slightly varying heights but all were of clear white, smooth, transparent glass. They were empty, and all shiningly clean, and I felt they were standing there waiting to be filled with that for which they were made. And again as I watched I felt they were a part of my life ready now to receive their meaning, their truth, and I was grieving that I did not know how to fill them or with what, but somehow knew, in T.S. Eliot's words from 'The Four Quartets,' that 'the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting...'