Dear All of Us,
Please be patient with me
because that's just what
I am right now - a
PATIENT
This is day eight of the flu,
and it's been a test of patience
for my caring spouse practitioner
and for me: dreadful,
incessant night coughing,
watery eyes, stuffed nose, sore throat,
my wife sleeping on a cot
in another room,
sinus headache, Netty Pot
using up a box of tissues a day...
Will spare us all more of the more.
I don't mean this
to be a Pity Party.
I do mean it to be
a reminder,
an example of
the call to be
PATIENT
and not just
with the flu.
That call to patience
has many reaches,
textures, tones and hues.
It is woven deep
in the fiber
our spiritual lives.
God is love and
Love is patient.
1 John 4:8
1 Corinthians 13:4
Patience is a lot
wider, higher and deeper
than putting up with delays
and difficulties.
In its fullness being
PATIENT
is Love purring
on all eight cylinders.
It means we accept that
we are not God,
we don't set the clock,
we don't orchestrate reality
as it unfolds.
It does mean we are
one with God
as God works things out
in seconds and in centuries,
in ways and means beyond
our say or ken - things
easy to hard,
understandable to unfathomable,
things as varied as
sexual passion to cancer pain,
or plain old garden variety flu.
It means being with
and feeling with other.
Patience, patient, passion
all have the same root meaning
(L) passio - passing, being with,
moving along, sharing,
feeling with as that happens.
Most basically there's
a Creation going on.
It's dynamic and progressive.
Given sin and chaos,
there is also a
Recreation going on.
Letting God hold us
close in on all this,
be part of it,
be active in it,
to feel it,
means in and with God
being passionately
PATIENT
- in traffic
- as a church renews
- as bratty representatives
act out in The House
- mourning with
a grieving colleague
- as we face our nation's fatal flaw
and die to its racism
- with a child who straggles
to grow up and groove in
- with ourselves as we outgrow
our false selves
- when supper is cold by the time
it gets to the table
- when our soul is arid,
- when it is in a
Springtime of freshness
- with the aged infirm
One with and feelingly so.
May we all go deep in patience,
feeling, moving and being moved
in action and reaction
one with God
as things are worked out.
"By your patience
you will gain your lives."
Jesus
Luke 21:19
"So let us not allow ourselves
to get fatigued doing good.
At the right time we will harvest
a good crop if we
don't give up, or quit."
Galatians 6:9
The Message
This week's posting is not
all that well worked out.
It's the best I can offer just now.
Thanks for being so
PATIENT
John Frank
******
WELCOME
to our visitors this week
from Israel.
So good to be together.
Shalom
frankly speaking
spirituality for the street
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
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Love to all!
******
