{"id":730,"date":"2007-12-17T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/dear-god-on-patience-and-unkno.html"},"modified":"2007-12-17T11:00:27","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T11:00:27","slug":"dear-god-on-patience-and-unkno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/dear-god-on-patience-and-unkno.html","title":{"rendered":"Dear God: On Patience and Unknowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear God,
\nAdvent sure is full of “waiting\u201d and \u201cpatience\u201d themes<\/a>. Just when I think we have moved on from waiting with John the Baptist for the arrival of Jesus, we get to \u201cpatience,\u201d one of my strongest qualities. NOT. In the Letter of Saint James, we read (James 5:7-10):<\/p>\n

Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. Se how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient. . . . Take as an example of hardship and patience, brothers and sisters, the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One reason that patience is so hard for me, God, is that it requires living in the present. I\u2019d rather obsess about the hurtful memories in my past, or fret about the terrible events to come in the future. Patience will have none of that. It\u2019s about sitting still for a minute, being okay with the moment, existing, if even temporarily, without expectations. Patience is simply staying put, in the emptiness, as Henri Nouwen writes:<\/p>\n

The word \u2018patience\u2019 means the willingness to stay where we are, and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nBut this philosophy doesn\u2019t jibe well in our overachieving, rushing, impatient American culture. The ones who succeed pack their schedule full of company board meetings, PTO meetings, triathlon-training meetings, how-to-build-your-own-teepee meetings, how-to-get-your-kid-to-wipe meetings. You get where I\u2019m going meetings. Just kidding.
\nI have no doubt you have an easier time with other cultures, like the ones who enjoy siestas in the middle of the day. As much as I love to nap, I have too many things to do, people to save, wars to accidentally fuel by applying my codependent battle-stopping strategies<\/a>. I\u2019m a human being stuck in human-doing mode.
\nI guess I\u2019m afraid, God, that once I stop producing, I will become a lazy, passive chick, no good for anything, that once I sit down, I won\u2019t be able to get up again. As a person programmed with \u201call or nothing\u201d thinking, I have difficulty with Nouwen\u2019s notion of \u201cliving actively in the present,\u201d meaning that I get to keep the perks of an active mind and body if I don\u2019t attach to it all kinds of expectations. In other words, patience isn\u2019t synonymous with \u201cpassivity.\u201d On the contrary, patience requires hard work, discipline, and perseverance.
\nLiving patiently is like writing simple sentences with active verbs. It\u2019s a life exercise akin to the one I do with college students at the writing center of the Naval Academy once a week.
\nA student writes this: \u201cI was sitting here while my friend was doing her nails, and then I was standing.\u201d
\nBlah.
\nWe circle the verbs \u201cwas sitting,\u201d \u201cwas doing,\u201d and \u201cwas standing.\u201d We replace them with two active verbs, \u201cstood up\u201d and \u201cobserve,\u201d so that our revised sentence reads this way: \u201cI stood up to observe my friend\u2019s purple nails.\u201d
\nNow, granted, the purple nail polish would go against Navy uniform code anyway, but you get the idea.
\nRight now my sentence in life reads a little bit like this: \u201cI stood up when she let me, if it was okay, near the bathroom to observe my friend\u2019s purple nails if she didn\u2019t mind, if she liked me, if it was okay to look, and if she wasn\u2019t going to say something demeaning to me because I hadn\u2019t even cut my nails in like five months.\u201d
\nMy verbs are active, but I have way too many clauses.
\nGod, I\u2019m thinking that you don\u2019t want me to go all passive–to \u201cwas sitting,\u201d \u201cwas doing,\u201d and \u201cwas standing\u201d–but instead be active in an empty space, to trash all the conditions.
\nTo be patient, then, demands of us that we renounce our sense of control and knowledge–of the past, of the present, and of the future\u2014and that we become like a curious child who imposes no judgment on the past and no expectation on the future. It means becoming a fool for You, God: relaxing my grip on the outcome, and bowing out of philosophical and theological debates about who You are and what You\u2019re about. Being patient means to know that I don\u2019t know, and to be okay with being ignorant before you, like John of the Cross<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

Ignorance does not grasp what wisdom is; and in God\u2019s sight those who think they have some wisdom are very ignorant. \u2026 Only those who set aside their own knowledge and walk in God\u2019s service like unlearned children receive wisdom from God. . . . Accordingly, a man must advance to union with God\u2019s wisdom by unknowing rather than by unknowing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear God, Advent sure is full of “waiting\u201d and \u201cpatience\u201d themes. Just when I think we have moved on from waiting with John the Baptist for the arrival of Jesus, we get to \u201cpatience,\u201d one of my strongest qualities. NOT. In the Letter of Saint James, we read (James 5:7-10): Be patient, brothers and sisters,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration-and-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\nDear God: On Patience and Unknowing - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/dear-god-on-patience-and-unkno.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dear God: On Patience and Unknowing - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dear God, Advent sure is full of “waiting\u201d and \u201cpatience\u201d themes. 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