QUARANTINE BLOG # 622

December 12, 2021

The message this third Sunday of Advent, “Waiting for the 9:01,” is from The Word in the Wind, by Bruce L. Taylor.

The morning sun had just climbed over the hill on the south side of the river – the hill on which the university was nestled among a forest of bare branches – and now it illuminated the taller hill that dominated the center of town, crowned by the great cathedral that towered above the shops and offices and apartments, and the railroad platform on which a lone figure stood. Dressed in a gray wool coat, checkered blue scarf, and dark gray hat, the man began pacing back and forth, perhaps in anticipation, perhaps to stay warm, but he paused every few steps to glance eastward up the tracks. Occasionally, he grasped the collar of his coat against the cold December air that turned his breath into little white puffs. The train from the city was not due for another twenty minutes yet, but the man showed no interest, whenever he passed the door to the waiting room, of seeking refuge from the chill.

As he came back into the shadow of the station, a heavy wooden door on the side of the depot noisily slid open, and a porter dressed in the railroad’s winter uniform pulled out onto the platform a cart bearing half a dozen suitcases and boxes. “Just left Brampton eight minutes late,” the porter said as she passed the man. The man nodded vaguely in acknowledgment of the information. 

The porter dropped the handle of the cart and stood for a moment watching the man walking away from her toward the east end of the platform. She judged him to be well into his seventies, though his gray beard might have made him look older than his age. The porter had only worked at the station for a couple of weeks, but every morning since she began, the man in the wool coat had shown up about this time, pacing back and forth until the train arrived, and again later in the day when it was time for the evening train to arrive. 

Then he would walk up to the door of the silver and blue and yellow coach, looking intently into the faces of the passengers who stepped off onto the platform, and when they had all passed him by and the departing passengers had climbed up the steps into the coach and the conductor had closed the door, he would shake his head a little sadly, and watch the train as it pulled out on its westward journey far down the track until the red rear light disappeared from view around the curve toward Kitchener, Ontario. Then the man would descend the stairs to the street level below and disappear into the morning traffic or into the evening darkness.

After her first few days on duty, the porter had asked the station manager about the man. “Been coming for as many years as I’ve been working here,” the station manager had told her. “Meets every westbound train. Don’t know who he is – never asked. He’s got nothing better to do, I suppose. Maybe he just likes trains. Or maybe he’s not quite right in the head. He hasn’t been harassing you, has he?”

“Oh, no, sir, no,” the porter assured him. “I just wondered. It seems so strange.”

“Just humor him,” the station manager had replied, swiveling his chair back to his desk and continuing with his paperwork.

But all those other days she had noticed the man, the weather had been warmer. Cardinals had flitted from tree to tree along the street below the tracks, children had laughed as they ran along the sidewalk to school, passengers had sat on the outdoor benches reading the morning newspaper. 

It had been a mild December so far, but now a cold east wind was blowing in off of the lake, and as she watched the man, low clouds pushed by the wind suddenly blotted out the sunshine and blanketed the town with a pall of somber hues. The sudden gloom moved her to concern for the pacing figure. Her friends often called her inquisitive and rather impetuous. For days now, the mystery of the old man on the platform had been growing. It had finally become too much for her. As he walked back in her direction, she resolved to satisfy her curiosity. “Are you waiting for someone, then?” she asked when he was still a ways off from her.

“What?” he looked up and around vaguely, then noticed her as for the first time. “I beg your pardon,” he said in a soft brogue.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just asked if you are waiting for someone on the train.”

“Yes. That is, I think so. I mean, I am hoping.” He turned away from her to look back up the track, then he began his slow walk to the east end of the platform again.

“Cold, eh?” she called after him, but he apparently did not hear her.

As the man approached the porter on his return trip along the platform, he started to turn around before reaching her, but she called over to him, “Someone you know, then? A friend or a relative?”

He stopped and turned back toward her. “Someone I know? Yes. That is, we’ve only met once, long ago, but I know him, yes. I have followed his career very closely.”

“Well,” said the porter, “it will still be several minutes yet. Why not wait inside where it’s warm?”

“No, no,” said the man. “I must be here when he arrives. I must be ready.”

The porter thought a few seconds. “I could let you know when I see the headlamp.”

The man smiled a bit, raising his hand and waving it slightly. “Thank you, but... I’ll stay here waiting.”

As he started walking back east along the platform, the porter strode over to walk alongside him. “I know it’s not my business,” she said, bracing herself for an affirmative gesture from the man; when it did not come, she continued. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been here every day since I’ve been working. And when I asked about it, I heard that you’ve been here to meet the westbound trains every day for several years.”

“Yes, well, you see,” said the man, stopping now, “I don’t know exactly when he’s coming. I only know that he is coming, and I need to be here when he arrives.”

“He’s coming out from the city, then?”

“He’s been in the city recently, yes. And other places. I hear of him working all around – Kingston, Barrie, Peterborough.”

“Perhaps you could go to meet him?”

“Oh, it would be hard to know where he is from day to day. And his work is too important for me to presume so much. He knows what has to be done, and when, and where. He’ll come,” said the man smiling more broadly now at the young woman and nodding. “He’ll come. He said he would come.” He looked back up the track and nodded to himself. “He’ll come.” 

“He must be quite important to you,” she said.

“Important?” the man responded as they began walking, his voice hinting some surprise at her lack of perception. “He has carried on the vision of my own work, and that of my predecessors, and made it his own. Very important work, not appreciated by everyone. But he has taken it to such new heights, has revealed its profound implications for all people. I thought I knew what it was all about, but now I know that I really understood so little.” He looked at his young companion and saw that she did not at all comprehend what he was saying. He explained more simply, as in summary, “Everything will be fine when he arrives. Everything will be just fine.”

“Then maybe I should be waiting for this person to come, too,” the young woman said with a chuckle.

She had expected the man to laugh with her, but instead, he looked at her quite intently now. “Yes, indeed you should.”

The young woman’s mood of gentle mirth disappeared, and she became all sober. There was such an earnestness in the man’s voice, a sense of urgency, almost, of pleading.

“But you’ve been waiting for him for years,” she finally said.

“Yes,” said the man. “I’ve waited a long while. There have been times when I almost gave up hope, but then I would receive his assurances through a trusted messenger, I would remember the promise that he made me long ago, and my hope would be restored.”

The young woman looked at him, but she remained silent. He glanced up the track, and then turned toward her and spoke in a tone of close confidence. “You see, I know he will come, because I know him. It’s not that we’ve conversed face to face in all these years, but I have spoken with others who have been with him recently, friends who assist him in his work, and they have told me that it is well worth the wait, not to give up hope. 

“For a time, I doubted whether I should wait – the reports of his comings and goings seemed so different from what I had hoped, disappointing at first. I had expected that he would perpetuate my own work, continue in the paths that I had pioneered, adhere to the plans that I had made. But that was before I understood the true importance of it all, saw the real meaning – when I was younger, thinking mainly of myself, my own desires, my own ambitions; I thought that I might be able to use him to advance my own agenda. 

“But the things that I heard he was interested in, the things he was doing, didn’t seem to fulfill my plans, my expectations. He heard of my disenchantment, my disappointment, even, and sent word to me. ‘Can’t you understand what my work is all about?’ he said. ‘See how people’s lives are changed, made more complete, less concerned with selfish ambitions. If you want something different, if you don’t think that’s important, you should quit waiting for me and look for someone else who is more in tune with your desires. But if what I have to offer – what you hear that I am doing everywhere I go – if that is what you want, be patient and be ready to meet me – I am coming.’ 

“And I grew to understand over the years that I had only scratched the surface, you see, only glimpsed through my own poor efforts and understandings the enormous scope of it all, had such a narrow conception of the work. I thought I was the teacher, but now I realize that he is the master. 

“So,” said the man, “here I am, ready and waiting to meet my master. And I fully expect him to step off of that train this morning. And should he not, then I will be here tonight, after spending the day trying to be faithful to his vision, fully expecting him to step off of that train. I trust his judgment about when it will be right.”

The young woman looked into the man’s blue-gray eyes, aged and filled with longing, and then she looked up the track. She still did not understand exactly what or whom the man was waiting for, but she had a sense that she, too, should be expectant and hopeful, though she didn’t know what it was she was expecting. 

She did have hopes in her life, of course, or did once – her home life had not been perfect, and now her parents were divorced and her mother was sick and she seldom heard from her father. 

There had been bigger dreams after university, but she had to take any job that would support her, even lugging baggage carts on a cold and windy railroad platform. 

There had been a young man, and he had made fine-sounding promises, but, after she had given her heart and her body, he was gone. 

Her hope had seemed to dissolve even as her yearning had become more acute. She had been interested in banning land mines and saving the old growth forests and promoting a local rock group, but none of those things seemed ultimately satisfying. She had wanted to be a part of something bigger than her own life that would give it meaning, had wanted to surrender herself completely to something worthy of her devotion, but everything had disappointed her in one way or another. She had high hopes when her political party won the election, but now that it was in power, nothing had really changed – more economic muddle and continuing constitutional crisis punctuated every few weeks by a whiff of scandal, and, more immediately worrisome, talk from her own party about accelerating the payments due on her student loans. She wished that something could stir in her the hope and devotion that this man had.

“You really think this could be the day, then – he could really be on this train?” she asked the man.

“I fully expect it,” the man said, looking east up the track and nodding. Then he added, “That is what I live for.”

The young woman followed the man’s gaze, and she felt an anticipation rise in her breast. Exactly what was about to happen, she didn’t know, and she realized that this event, she had no part in arranging, had no way to make happen. For the old man’s sake, she hoped, though, that this was the day. But no, that wasn’t all of it. For some reason that she could not pinpoint, she realized that it was not for the old man’s sake alone – she found herself hoping that this was the day for her own sake.

They stood together waiting in silence, a man nearing the end of his life and a woman just turned an adult, watching, watching. She had looked up that track many times over the past couple of weeks, but never with the same emotion that she had now. Then, there it was – just a faint, tiny pinprick at first, but then growing in brightness as the young woman’s certainty grew that it was real – the headlamp of the 9:01. She grinned and turned toward the man, and could just make out the trickle of a tear down his cheek through the blur of her own tears of joyful hope.

After the Master came the first time, he said he would return.  Are you watching?  Are you ready?

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