PATIENCE: Miracles Unfold in Perfect Time

Keep your center open is what the poets say.

Do you have any idea how hard that is?

To be essentially unoccupied, to drift,

to put your hands together, cupped and empty,

And let them remain so.

Patience means open ness.  We like that too.  From the Latin - patiens - if that helps.  A field, for example is patient, open, waiting for rain.

I like that analogy - But give me a break. - Lois Main Templeton

The above words describing PATIENCE are written on a triplicate water color I own, an original of my dear friend, Lois Main Templeton whose artistry is an effortless way of being that gifts me and this world.  Reading her words, I soak up the higher wisdom and delight in the laughter it stirs.

I have come to know that PATIENCE includes kicking and screaming, trying to force things, pushing ahead not trusting the timing.  It isn't about appearing to be calm and peaceful as I repress the truth of all that is bubbling within me.  I have no interest in appearing to be what I am not.  Fully, wholly human, I kick and scream rawly allowing what has come forward and find myself more alive, breathing into every cell in my body in this ability to live honestly.  I am not a field - patient, open, waiting for rain so why would I try to be other than I am?

Running on the pier at Islamorada, Florida Keys, I saw a pelican perched watching the waters and in a flash, it plunged into the waters devouring its prey.  It struck me that it didn't swim around pecking at the water, wasting energy trying to find the fish.  It waited.  It perched on the pier and in perfect time, it snatched its prey.  I immediately thought of a paper weight a friend had given me several years ago that said:  PATIENCE:  Every Miracle Unfolds In The Perfect Hour.  There was a pelican on the paper weight which had made no sense to me until that moment. 

When I looked up the symbolic meaning of the pelican, I found this message:  The ability to be bouyant and to rest on top in spite of heaviness of life circumstances.  The pelican teaches that no matter how difficult life becomes, no matter how much you plunge - you can pop to the surface, rising above life's trials.  This is right in line with my experience of kicking and scream, eventually allowing what is which lifts me above the muck.  MIRACULOUSLY, this always happens in perfect time - no need to push or force.

The invitation is to look back and see how the unfolding of our lives has required PATIENCE even when we don't consider ourselves to be patient people.  Looking back helps us to trust the unfolding of our lives and reminds us to not waste energy but to rest in this knowing.