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 a ramble on 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, True patience is anything but limp, indecisive or docile. Sometimes, it requires bags of forbearance and not a little cussing.

By now, winter snows should have disappeared from the eastern Ontario highlands, and its forests should be carpeted with wildflowers, but recent recent storms brought ice, snow and bitterly cold winds. There will be no wildflowers in the woods for a week or two, and there are times when I think springtime will never 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 (Mikhail Pletnev) and the Bach preludes (Glenn Gould) tuck everything back into place, and so does 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.

Whatever the weather, we head out and look at the sun rising or setting somewhere, watch frozen cattails rattling their bones along the shore of our favorite lake. We listen to the wind in the bare trees, lean against the old rail fence and watch 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 and stay.

I am learning that patience is a wild and fierce emotion, and being patient with one's own self is the hardest thing of all. As 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 bloom from another year's wanderings. In early spring, the wildflowers emerge from the earth and dead leaves of my favorite place in the whole wide world, and they glow like little suns in their shaded woodland alcoves, all snowy white petals and golden hearts. Colonies of sanguinaria canadensis always leave me breathless when I encounter them, and in a week or two, I will see them again. I am counting the days until I do, perhaps not as patiently as I should.