Patience has always been a challenge for me. Lynn J Kelly’s blog post today (see link below) helps me better understand how my impatience is a form of anger which I would be much better off without.
“Have patience with all things but first of all with yourself.” – Francis de Sales
My lifetime mantra was adopted from Yogi Bear. I just wanted to be “smarter than the average bear.” (See http://www.unfinishedman.com/smarter-than-the-average-bear/)
I’ve recently learned the hard way that my ignorance and greed are a powerful combination to bring me “back to earth” and, better yet, all the way to “rock bottom.”
Below is a recent post from the Center for Action and Contemplation which informs us that patience and humility are possible when we face our addictions and acknowledge our failings and what must change in our lives to overcome them.
May Richard Rohr’s words below bring some comfort and inspiration today.
Richard Rohr has learned from alcoholics and the Twelve Steps that it’s when we hit rock bottom that we realize how our suffering and God’s suffering are connected:
Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is—and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly, the ones who can name “healing” correctly, the ones who know what they have been saved from, and the only ones who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves.
It seems only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. All they can do is thank God they made it through! For the rest of us, it is mere speculation, salvation theories, and “theology.”
Those who have passed over to healing and sobriety eventually find a much bigger world of endurance, meaning, hope, self-esteem, deeper and true desire, and, most especially, a bottomless pool of love, both within and without. The Eastern fathers of the church called this transformation theosis, or the process of the divinization of the human person. This deep transformation is not achieved by magic, miracles, or priestcraft, but by a “vital spiritual experience” that is available to all human beings. It leads to an emotional sobriety, an immense freedom, a natural compassion, and a sense of divine union that is the deepest and most universal meaning of that much-used word salvation. Only those who have passed over know the real meaning of that word—and that it is not just a word at all.
It is at precisely this point that the suffering God and a suffering soul can meet. It is at this point that human suffering makes spiritual sense, not to the rational mind, the logical mind, or even the “just and fair” mind, but to the logic of the soul, which I would state in this way:
Suffering people can love and trust a suffering God.
Only a suffering God can “save” suffering people.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 116–119.
It’s early morning and I’m looking for pearls to guide me today. Here are three that have helped me already. May they be helpful to you as well.
“The principal purpose of memory is to anticipate the future, not to remember the past (Hancock 2009).” Peter Hancock @ peterhancock.ucf.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2012/06/Hancock-Shahnami-2010.pdf
“It is the Breath … that reveals life, sustains life, and renews life in every way.” Richard Rohr @ cac.org
“Getting angry and making a decision out of anger are not the same thing. That’s why Seneca said that the greatest remedy for your temper was delay. Feeling the feeling and acting on the feeling are separated by a space and the bigger that space, the better the choice we will make.” Ryan Holiday @ Daily Stoic
life is a series of flights
we think we choose when to leave, when to arrive and where to go
but the variables are innumerable
plans, if made at all, are often challenged
and sometimes thwarted
dearly departed, dearly encountered,
traveling companions have plans too
and preferences and dreams
god, a good night’s sleep would be so helpful, i think
get me to the airport on time
Today’s free verse soliloquy is the result of dreams, texts, and holiday travel challenges. May we all be safe, healthy, and patient during this holiday season.
March 11, 2023
The mother of expectation is patience. The French author Simone Weil writes in her notebooks: “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” Without patience our expectation degenerates into wishful thinking. Patience comes from the word patior, which means “to suffer.” The first thing that Jesus promises is suffering: “I tell you . . . you will be weeping and wailing . . . and you will be sorrowful.” But he calls these birth pains. And so, what seems a hindrance becomes a way; what seems an obstacle becomes a door; what seems a misfit becomes a cornerstone. Jesus changes our history from a random series of sad incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity for a change of heart. To wait patiently, therefore, means to allow our weeping and wailing to become the purifying preparation by which we are made ready to receive the joy that is promised to us.
Life Matters 