Waiting is

“Waiting is” is a compact expression of Martian discipline that recurs at moments when other people want certainty, explanation, or immediate action. Its completion is not a fixed instruction to do nothing: waiting continues until fullness, when understanding or a response is ready. Through Jill, Patricia, Mike, and the Nest, the phrase becomes both a way to interpret intimacy and a practical ethic of patience.

Meaning and Form

The saying appears in several forms, most explicitly as “Waiting is, until fullness.” The unfinished quality of “Waiting is” matters: the words do not specify a timetable or promise that a desired outcome will arrive on demand. Instead, they direct attention away from impatience and toward a condition of readiness. In the Martian conceptual framework, waiting has substance; it is something one inhabits until fullness, rather than an empty interval to be hurried through.

This teaching is not presented as simple delay. Its recurrence links waiting with acts that already carry meaning before they can be fully explained. When Jill asks Mike about sharing water and its significance, he says that he almost understands in fullness and adds, “Waiting is.” The response acknowledges partial understanding without pretending it is complete. The phrase allows him to remain in the process of knowing instead of supplying a premature definition.

The wording also changes with its circumstances. Sometimes it stands alone as a concise reminder; elsewhere its continuation is made explicit, or Jill answers it with recognition. These variations make the expression feel less like a slogan handed down unchanged than a shared practice: one person names the need to wait, and another shows that the lesson has begun to take hold.

Intimacy and Understanding

The expression first gains particular force in the conversations around Jill and Mike’s water-sharing. Patricia explains that love is present in the act, while making clear that such sharing cannot be bought or sold. When she asks whether Jill would do it for money, Jill refuses even the enormous hypothetical payment. Mike then says that he almost understands in fullness and connects the moment to waiting. The scene brings an abstract teaching into contact with a choice grounded in affection rather than price.

Patricia later says she is no longer worried about whether Jill and Mike are saved: Mike has told her about waiting and why it is, and Jill confirms that she understands. She says she is no longer impatient about anything. The change is practical as well as spiritual. In the conversation that follows, Patricia gives Jill and Mike the copy of The New Revelation that Blessed Foster had given her on the night he placed his kiss on her. Jill is moved and initially resists accepting so personal a gift. The text places this intimate exchange beside Patricia’s new confidence in waiting, making the teaching part of how she can give and how Jill receives.

Waiting also helps govern Mike’s response to Patricia’s wish to remain with them. He worries that he does not understand love or people, and does not want to send her away; Jill urges him to keep her with them. Mike answers, “Waiting is, Jill,” and Jill replies that she knows. He recognizes that Patricia wants to give herself continually to everyone, and that her Happiness meetings, snakes, and marks do not exhaust that impulse. The New Revelation, he understands, means something particular to Patricia. Waiting here does not erase the immediate need to care for her; it gives Mike and Jill a way to stay with the complexity of what she wants rather than forcing it into a quick judgment.

Learning, Doubt, and Fullness

The teaching does not prevent confusion from returning. Jill once finds Mike sitting without trance among a large collection of sacred writings: the Talmud, the Kama Sutra, several Bibles, the Book of the Dead, the Book of Mormon, Patricia’s treasured New Revelation, the Apocrypha, the Koran, The Golden Bough, The Way, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and other works, including Crowley’s Book of the Law. Faced with this array, Mike says he does not understand. The breadth of his reading has not yielded an instant synthesis; knowledge remains something he is still trying to bring to fullness.

Mike then wonders whether waiting will ever fill the gap he feels, saying that he is not really a man but a Martian in a body of the wrong shape. Jill answers from their relationship, telling him that he is enough of a man for her and that she loves his body as it is. In this moment, “Waiting is” is not a mechanical reassurance that every uncertainty has already been solved. Mike’s doubt is spoken aloud, and Jill meets it with a specific affirmation. The teaching frames incompleteness as something to live through, while the exchange shows that intimacy can answer a fear without claiming to settle every question behind it.

The Nest’s Practice

When Ben returns to the Nest, the phrase is translated into hospitality. Patricia welcomes him and says there is no hurry; the others will come when waiting is filled. She shows him around, including the large kitchen, the library, the ample bathrooms, and the soft-floored little nests where the members sleep. The welcome is open but unforced: Ben is invited to look around and encounter the community at his own pace.

Ben remains uncertain about the Church and says he will not stay even a week. Patricia does not argue him into a commitment. She says she will ask again in a week or two and that there is no hurry. Mike similarly predicts that Ben may later phone and decide to stay longer, while Ben continues to doubt it. The phrase thus informs the Nest’s manner of receiving a possible member: curiosity and uncertainty are not treated as offenses that must be overcome on command.

Mike explains that the group is legally and morally a church, and that the Nest can be called a monastery, but that it is not trying to bring people to God or save souls. Its members claim to offer truth that can be checked rather than faith that must simply be believed, though learning Martian is a demanding prerequisite. Against that account, “Waiting is, until fullness” names a discipline suited to learning: the Nest does not promise that understanding can be delivered instantly, and it does not confuse patient welcome with effortless instruction.

Narrative Significance

Across these scenes, the phrase moves between intimate recognition, personal uncertainty, and communal practice. Jill’s response to Patricia marks a change from impatience; Mike uses the teaching when he cannot yet fully understand Jill, love, or the purpose of Patricia’s generosity; and the Nest applies it to Ben’s hesitant arrival. Repetition gives the words continuity, while each new setting tests what waiting asks of the people who use them.

The expression also resists two opposite simplifications. It is not a promise that every desire will be fulfilled on an individual schedule, and it is not an excuse to dismiss another person’s needs. Mike’s concern for Patricia, Jill’s reassurance to Mike, and Patricia’s patient treatment of Ben all show waiting alongside active care. Fullness is therefore less a guaranteed reward than a measure of readiness: a way to recognize that understanding, choice, or welcome cannot always be forced into the present moment.