Patience, I’ve always maintained, is an expression of faith. For months now, I’ve been feeling an urgency to understand a vexing problem so that I can correct the misunderstanding that I’m certain is coming between me and my associate. My body knows, my senses tell me, that I am impatient.
So, yesterday, when browsing among all the beautiful things at the garden store, I saw a vase that had these words written on it,
“The secret of nature is patience.”
I vowed to remember it, to paint it and memorialize it because it seemed like such a beautiful thought. Now, I suspect the beauty of it is that I need to apply it to human nature; to my nature and keep conscious of the secret, try to keep the practice of patience - patience with me as I make this troubling journey with my friend. I can make this a journey into faith that we’ll work this out, into faith that, whatever happens (perhaps something I cannot even imagine) is going to be a good thing or I can keep spinning my wheels and trying to have all the answers, be the one with the right answers. I can hold on to the belief that that is what will get this over with-if she'll just trust me. (I just want it over with!) Here, I'm reminded of a children's book by the Hobans: "A Bargain for Francis", in which Francis (or her mother) asks, "Do you want to be friends or do you want to be careful?" I am SO accustomed to careful that I really do want that even as I would really like to have the friend I trusted back. When I trust her, we can work things out. When she doesn't seem to understand, when the trust is lost, we can't. I can't. It keeps coming back to the need to be patient, to have faith so that we can work things out according to our natures, and get back into a new harmony with each other.
