Shared by Steph
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space between Us
Last year, during Melbourne’s extended lockdown, a friend sent us this poem by Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue. We stuck it up on the fridge – somewhere between the remote learning timetable and the photos of distant family and it helped us lean into the enforced slowness. As we encounter some bitter weather again at the moment, the poem has been resurrected for the fridge/altar.
This poem reminds me of the value and indeed the necessity of the paramita of patience. This paramita, like a good poem, contains within it complexity and contradiction…
Whilst the poem offers an assurance that the weather will pass, as weather inevitably does, it doesn’t shy away from the fact that weather, internal and external, can be, at times, pretty bitter. I am trying to remind myself that patience, after 200 plus days of lockdown, doesn’t have to mean being falsely positive, or ignoring that there are many people doing it very tough in various ways at this time.
Practicing patience isn’t about saying that there is no suffering. Rather, sometimes patience is about, to paraphrase Joko Beck , ‘suffering intelligently by bearing witness to ourselves’. So engaging with the paramita of patience for me at the moment is about being able to notice and truly accept what is going on in my body, heart, and head moment to moment, day to day, weather pattern to weather pattern. Sometimes lockdown weather isn’t so bad but there are definitely times of tiredness, frustration and sadness.
Once I have noticed these clouds, Diane Eshin Rizetto’s practice of asking “What am I leaving out?” has been a really useful one for me – what else can I include in my experience of this moment?
Yes, I am very tired of home schooling but I am grateful that our daughter is at a lovely school with beautiful teachers.
Yes, I am missing our family interstate and overseas and yet we are blessed that none of them have become sick over this time.
So I am in fact both tired and grateful, both sad and incredibly blessed. The poem and the paramita remind me that multiple things can be true at once …
the weather might be bitter but/and it will pass.