Patience is a Practice

Wednesday Wisdom. Patience is a practice. 

The theme of patience continues to emerge in the gospel readings during this Advent season. Last Sunday, we heard about the need to be like the farmer who waits “for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and late rains.”

But I ask myself, am I waiting in patience with hope or in despair? The rain has arrived here in Northern California, and after last year’s drought, it is hopeful rain. Everyone is smiling at the rain. Grateful for the rain. Perhaps, we need to practice this kind of gentleness and acceptance.

I feel the fresh rain seeping into the depth of my being, where I also need to be replenished like the earth. Can you receive God’s love like the rain, entering into the ground of your being, reaching into the soil of your soul and watering it? Can you find a way to bring softness to this time of waiting, as you wait for the fruit in your life to grow?

Can I meet God in the places in my life that are begging and calling for my patience? Last night, I woke up in the dark, and stayed awake. I am tired and weary today. Yet this is a time for me to practice gentleness of patience. I am mourning the loss of my mother, and my psyche is going through a deep reorientation. The mystery of death is the mystery of creation. My heart is expanding. My psyche is expanding. My sense of the Divine is expanding. With the gentleness of patience, I can embrace it and not resist it.

Where are you being invited to practice patience today? Where are you being called to lean into the softness, to rest in Divine love, and hold on to hope?

Daily Practice:

  • Fill your day with softness: wear a soft sweater, use kind words when speaking to yourself, take a warm bath.
  • Say to yourself throughout the day: I am choosing the path of patience and hope. 
  • When you feel overextended or tired, remember to slow down. Stop for a moment, and get grounded by taking a few deeper and more conscious breaths.
  • Extend the gift of patience to someone else.