Last week my car was in the shop, and the mechanics kept it longer than expected so they could figure out the mystery of its erratic behavior. The last time they worked on it, I told them, “I love this car. It has to go 20 years (it’s 17 now) or 200,000 miles (it’s now at 125,000).” When I picked it up this time, I told the woman at the desk that I didn’t mind being patient while they worked on my car, and I joked about how loyal I was—to people and things.
“Maybe you’re too patient with us,” she said, laughing. She paused, and then added, looking straight at me, “You’re good wife material.”
I laughed with her and then drove home—without stalling once.
But her words stayed with me. “The wise person learns from everyone,” say the Hasids and many other spiritual teachers.
After youthful years of speed and frustration, I have learned to wait patiently, for appointments, traffic, people, God. It’s a peaceful feeling, this surrender, trusting that everything is working together for good, every detour and delay, postponement and cancellation, all nothing put passing outcomes that will be folded into a larger whole in which their meaning or lack of meaning will become clear. I am thankful to experience it at last.
And now my teacher at the auto repair shop asks me to see something new. Patience is a way; it is not THE way. Walking through life requires not only steadiness but rhythm. We walk in a world of seeming opposites—mercy and justice, security and risk, patience and seizing the moment. Our task is not to balance them, but to hear the rhythm so that we will know when we are required to lean to the side of mercy and when to lean toward justice, when to bear all things patiently and when to cry out for change, when to breathe slowly and when to run toward love and forgiveness.
The people of Egypt have waited patiently for change for 30 years. They have trusted God and the destiny God has written for them as individuals and a people. And now they are responding to a new call and a new cry—a call for an end to patience and a crying out for a new beginning for greater justice for all. Should they be “good wives” and bear with a situation they know is harmful to their people? Wait meekly for their autocratic “husband” to change? No. They are responding to the rhythm of abundant life in their country. Their protests have arisen out of their careful discerning that the moment for waiting has passed and the time of acting in creative fidelity has arrived. Who are we, who do not live and breathe their world, to tell them to go on waiting?
Life has taught me patience and acceptance. I have also learned how to speak up for justice, for myself and others What I am still learning is how to dance to the ever-changing rhythm of life so that I make the right move at the right time. I love dancing. I want to be come a better dancer.
In all our lives, as individuals and as peoples, there is a time to be patient and a time to act,a time to hold back and a time to race ahead. Knowing how to hear the rhythm of life and move gracefully with it, listening deeply to discern when it is more life-giving to wait and when it is more life-giving to act decisively—that is a daily spiritual practice, one we can do only for ourselves, not for others, whether they are in our own homes or across the world.
May there be justice, blessing, abundant life, and joy for all the peoples in Egypt, soon.
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