Patience is the mother of expectation, I think, and perhaps hope. No matter how sorry and angry I get, I can always have a change of heart.

I am grateful for Spring, my Sun Dial has returned. Life in the country has taught me to tell time from the shadows, I don’t own a wrist watch any more, and today, I surprised myself by realizing I can tell time by the shadows falling this very old metal hanging basket that Maria just filled up with pansies.

Shadows are a faithful clock. I was so disconnected from nature I still forget sometimes how much it has to teach me. This is the grace of Spring, this basket.  I call this a gentle photo.

I am more patient in the Spring. Simone Weil once wrote in her notebook that “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” I believe it.

Waiting patiently – sitting still – is the simplest thing to do, but also one of the most difficult.

We fear silence, doing nothing, putting the devices down or turning them off. Silence is so rare it is frightening. Everyone else is scrambling around out there to do something, how can it be all right for me to do nothing?

I have a Sacred Hour, I call it, it begins every day around four I turn everything off, feed the dogs, place a bottle of water alongside my chair. I take some deep breaths.

Sometimes I plug my earphones into my Iphone (today I listened to the new Van Morrison album – with Jazz Trumpeter Joey Defrancesco – it’s called You’re Driving Me Crazy, it is an album that invites patience.)

When the album was finished, I read some of the daily meditations from Henri J.M. Nouwen.

Then I sat in silent expectation. I am learning patience, every day.

As you know, I am drawn to the writers of what i believe is true Christianity. I am not a Christian, or a believer, I just love some of their ideas, they were great thinkers.

I wish they were the ones with the TV shows and political lobbyists,  and angry Christian spokespeople of our time, but of course, hurting people  and politicking is not something most real Christians do.

The prophets often counseled patience. Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances such as perseverance and/or the ability to wait in the face of delay.; provocation without responding to negative annoyance/anger/or exhibiting forebearance when under strain.  Patience is rare in our world.

The more of it I practice, the better I feel.

Nouwen writes that without patience, expectations often degenerate into wishful thinking, anger, jealousy or regret.  I can testify to that. I have to be patient to  get past the awful things clanking around in my head.

The early Christians promised nothing but suffering. “I tell you..you will be weeping and wailing..and you will be sorrowful,” Jesus is quoted as having said. He was prescient,  I suppose. That is how so many people feel every time they awaken to watch the news.

Sometimes I wish I were a devout Christian rather than an admirer of Christ, it would be easier to move through the anger and conflict that seems to fill the very air we breathe.

But the prophets called these pangs of suffering birth pains, and that is a great way to look at them. As a human being, I am bound to suffer. As a human being, I am bound to feel great joy and love.

But suffering is a beginning, not an end for me. I have no wish to join the throngs of the angry and aggrieved. Patience is the path.

What seems a hindrance becomes a way, what seems an argument becomes an opportunity, a misfit becomes a cornerstone.

I get angry and mournful sometimes about the things humans do to one another, and about the things I have done to human beings. I think about the dispiriting heartlessness and greed of some our leaders, but i change my narrative and my own history when I sit in silence and enter a state of patience.

I see the constant opportunity for these sad cruelties and disappointments to also be a constant opportunity for a change of heart.

The great thing about suffering is that there is always the chance of a change of heart.

The unhappiness and  unease is merely a purifying preparation for me, I am always ready to receive the hope that we alone, of all the creatures on the earth, can feel.