Friday Ramble - Patience

As I started off on the Friday ramble this week, the word that came to mind was patience, although I have already written about that word.

This week's offering has its roots in the Middle English pacient, the Middle French patient and the Latin word pati, all meaning to undergo something, to suffer through, get through, or put up with something and do it with grace and dignity - no whining, screaming or going completely off one's nut. It's a fine old word for someone who aspires to authenticity or enlightenment, but it's not a word for wimps and sissies, and true patience is anything but limp, indecisive or docile. Sometimes, it requires bags of forbearance and not a little cussing.

By now, the snow should be vanishing from the Lanark highlands, and there should be budding wildflowers in the woods. Alas, recent storms brought subzero temperatures, deep snow and bitterly cold winds. There will be no wildflowers in our forest for several weeks, and there are times when I wonder if springtime will ever come.

What is one to do??? I pick up my camera or paint brush, brew a pot of tea, pummel bread, stir up a fiery curry, go walkabout with Beau, curl up in my favorite chair with a good book. I just breathe, in and out, in and out, in and out.

For some reason, the elegant keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and the Bach preludes (Glenn Gould) tuck everything back into place, and so does listening to Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik or Die Zauberflöte. Grieg's Holberg Suite works wonders too, and in recent weeks I have also been listening to Sibelius.
 
Beau and I dream about the sun rising and setting in the highlands, about frozen cattails rattling their bones along the shore of our favorite lake. We remember listening to the wind in the bare trees, leaning against the old rail fence and watching last autumn's desiccated leaves whirl through the air like confetti. We cling to the fragile hope that springtime will show up any day now.

I am learning that patience is a wild and fierce emotion, and that being patient with one's own self is the hardest thing of all.  Spirit Rock's Jack Kornfield says, “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”  I may get there one of these lifetimes, but I have a very long way to go.

This morning's image is a bloodroot capture from some time ago. In early spring, the blooms emerge from the earth and dead leaves of my favorite place in the world, and they glow like little suns in the woods. Colonies of sanguinaria canadensis are absolute perfection, and they leave me breathless when I encounter them. They were my late soulmate's favorite flower, and we loved looking at them together. This will be my second spring without him, and I miss him so much.