Word of the Day: Patience
Image of the Day: top of the cross at Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries
Token of the Day: Legends of the Christ Child by Frances Margaret Fox with illustrations by Mildred Elgin
The book is an absolute delight. Written for young people in 1942 it is a collection of stories which illustrate and expand imaginatively on passages from the Gospels. There are wonderful drawings throughout too. I wonder if i will have the patience required to only read one story per day and thus make the book last for 17 days! I read the first story this morning which told of how the nightingale got its song - it was the joy of being with the angels and visiting the baby Jesus!
Patience - visible discomfort, desperate searching for a way out. I could write about other people, contemplate Jesus, Mary, Martha - anything other than consider my own ability, or lack thereof, to practice patience.
I can play the card game Patience but i'm definitely not a good patient. I work to empower individuals, moving them from patient to person - from being passive and having things done for and to oneself to being active and taking back control of one's life. And this is good work in the realm of recovery and rehabilitation from injury or illness but even there patience is required. We have stock phrases which i certainly have cringed at but which hold true: Time is a great healer, Give time time, patience is a virtue...(in fact it is one of the seven heavenly virtues)
It is difficult to simply wait. Not the kind of waiting we do when a bus is late, a client keeps us waiting or a visitor is due and we are anxious and excited but real waiting...with patience!
Brother Lawrence is known to many people for his work The Practice of the Presence of God. It took him time in the wilderness, desert time to discover how to live completely in God's presence. I reckon it took patience!
Increasing in patience is the work of the Holy Spirit, it brings with it deep peace. It is held in high regard in Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism... In Buddhism it is one of the perfections that one must train in and practice in order to realise perfect enlightenment.
I came across this quote which i find very helpful - now i can see that i need to do some taming!!!
Patience is passion tamed Lyman Abbott
MBSR - Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is a powerful programme that is being used to enhance health and wellbeing, to reduce stress and anxiety, and to help individuals manage their mental health. The techniques focus on the development of a non-judgmental approach of our moment-to-moment experience, teaching us patience, trust, acceptance and letting go of daily worries and anxieties. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction offers a powerful chemical free approach to health and well-being. It enables us to work differently with our daily physical, emotional and psychological stress, as well as offering powerful coping tools for dealing with a variety of cognitive problems e.g. depression, anxiety. For many, this training provides a solid foundation for deep emotional healing, inner strength and resources.
Looking this up has acted as a timely reminder to get on and start doing this work! Sometimes patience needs a little passion up its .....!!!
Blessings on us all as we wait on God.
Your blog continues to inspire me as you reach this half way, mid point, the tiping point,
ReplyDeletePatience - when i was holding your words i wondered what Pema Chodron had to say and found the following -
Patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don’t feed your discursive thought, you can be honest about the fact that you’re angry. But at the same time you can continue to let go of the internal dialogue. In that dialogue you are blaming and criticizing, and then probably feeling guilty and beating yourself up for doing that. It’s torturous, because you feel bad about being so angry at the same time that you really are extremely angry, and you can’t drop it. It’s painful to experience such awful confusion. Still, you just wait and remain patient with your confusion and the pain that comes with it.
Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it, but it also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting. You let the words go and just be there.
This suggests the fearlessness that goes with patience. If you practice the kind of patience that leads to the de-escalation of aggression and the cessation of suffering, you will be cultivating enormous courage.
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1309
As i enjoy the Legends of the Chirst Child with you i realise that the patience to wait, to hear all of the stories one day at a time requires perseverance as well as patience.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this is because one day at a time allows the stories to be experienced at more depth, rather than a cursory fly through of the pages.