“Real sustained silence, the kind that facilitates clear and creative thinking, quiets inner chatter as well as outer.” — Justin Talbot-Zorn and Leigh Marz, Harvard Business Review [Read more…] about Welcome the Silence
patience
Patience is Trusting in God’s Timing
Most days, I shrug off the Lutheran church’s marquee as I run past it during a morning run. The saying is usually a cliché or some sentimental rubbish. Other times, the saying hits home.
How to be Patient in the Gap
To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stand unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all!
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, “The Third Letter”
Clarifying Priorities
There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary – we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! – Romans 5:3-5 (The Message)
Practice Produces Patience
The problem with practicing the piano is that I know how far my skills have fallen. It’s been years since I played, so the fall isn’t unexpected. I simply have an awareness of how far I have to go if I hope to rise to that level again.
Playing the Waiting Game
The writing life is one of patience, a fact with which I struggle. I am not a patient person. If I see that something needs to be done, I do it. I don’t play games. I don’t wait around in hopes that someone else will do the task. I get the job done and move onto the next thing.