Patience?????

‘Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.’ -Henri J.M. Nouwen

Until reading this quote by Henri Nouwen, I have always seen patience and hope as two sides of the same coin. By exercising patience, one is exhibiting hope that the desired outcome will eventually come about. To be patient is to mark time.

But Nouwen puts a different spin on it. Patience he says is to live in the moment to the fullest, to appreciate what is around us and to savour it. Impatience is simply wishing we were living in the future and ignoring what the present has to offer, the fact that what we are looking or waiting or wishing for is really right here.

This rings true for me as I think of the many times I have been patience, wanting something, only to realize in retrospect that it was here all along.

It took 20 years of patient waiting before I finally achieved my dream and was able to attend university. Looking back, the education I received during those twenty years was far more valuable than that which I received in university. Yet it was only years later that I appreciated that.

Growing up in a small Ontario village, I was impatiently patient for the time when I could leave and experience the wider world. On looking back I have come to realize that it is the friendships and connections made there that have lasted over the interceding years.

So yes, when we are impatient for something to happen, for change, we run the risk of missing what is right there under our noses.

No where is this more apparent to me then in the mainline churches right now. As the number of people in the pews shrinks, as the hair get greyer and the average age gets higher, the tendency is to look back to those days when the pews were full, Sunday school classes were crowded and the ages spanned all the generations - and to consider this the norm. Or alternately to look ahead to what might happen should they be able to attract a younger age group through the use of current music, a revamping of the services to include current language and scientific thought, perhaps in surroundings more reminiscent of a coffee bar than a sanctuary. I wonder if they have ever looked at this quote of Nouwen’s and considered that perhaps the answer to their angst is right here within them? That right here within all churches is a growing desire for change, a growing desire within the people for knowledge, a growing hunger for not only personal growth and maturity but for a better world for ALL people.

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