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Winter Teaching<br><br>
I like the way that winter teaches patience.<br><br>
There's no way you can rush from one end of town to another; the main
street's still greasy with snowfall, and traffic is moving slowly. It's
not particularly cold, but the slush is deep and we know it, so we stop
to let people jaywalk rather than making them wait or walk to the end of
the block. There's no hurry anyway, not in a small town, not on the eve
of Christmas. <br><br>
Walking is a matter of patience, too, with a dollop of endurance; your
footing is never quite sure, so you take smaller steps, moving more
slowly, and it's a step forward and a tiny slip back each and every time.
<br><br>
Clearing up (unless you have a snowblower) is a patient process as well.
I don't do my own driveway now, but I remember years and years of
methodically dealing with snow: clearing wide and moving the snow well
off to the side, to allow for future storms. It was meditative work,
something I couldn't rush because I'd just exhaust (and perhaps injure)
myself. Sometimes it took two or three tries, with defrosting breaks, to
get the entire driveway clear. I learned during one hard year not to let
the snow get too deep; it was easier to shovel two 5-inch falls than one
10-inch one, especially when it fell heavy and wet. <br><br>
How do people learn patience without winter? I wonder about that
sometimes. Patience is about giving up control of the situation -- or
rather, recognizing that you never did have control of the situation --
and accepting that this is just going to be the way it is, and there's
not a whole lot of point getting your knickers knotted about it. That
what winter teaches.<br><br>
That seems to be impossibly difficult for some people. I admit that it's
a whole lot harder if, like me, you have a good-sized will and a strong
notion about the way things ought to be -- but perhaps to people with
that combination of characteristics, life seems to dump more and heavier
snowfalls. Otherwise, we'd get our own way too often and believe that
getting our way should be the normal state of affairs.<br><br>
Of course patience, like so many other virtues (loyalty, honour,
forbearance, steadfastness, fortitude -- you know, all those stuffy,
hopelessly pre-modern, annoyingly goody-two-shoes qualities) is now
generally regarded as a failure to advance the all-important cause of Me.
"I want it my way, and I want it NOW" is what our culture
clatters. And sooner or later it all comes crashing down, as it's doing
at this present time. "This storm means that I can't get my nails
done!" we whine.<br><br>
But in fact, God chose the other way, the wintry way of patience. Of
course most of the world doesn't do winter the way we do here in Canada
(and sometimes we don't either), but the symbolism is strong and most
important: God joins us in the waste places where we struggle, and he
joins us not from a position of mightiness and strength, but in a
position of helplessness and vulnerability. Why? Because God loves us so
much that God wanted to be with us completely, in all *our* helplessness
and vulnerability.<br><br>
So to our unending benefit, God chose to fit Godself into the rubbery,
tight, muscular confines of a womb, something that should astonish us
afresh each time we think of it, an act of the most outrageous grace and
humility and submission. An act of extraordinary patience.<br><br>
And we have spent the four weeks of Advent waiting patiently for this
night -- but our patience hasn't been a matter of suffering and
endurance, but of holy anticipation. We wait in trust for the Second
Coming, somehow keeping our lamps lit and our souls ready, but without
trying to hurry it. As a woman in the last weeks of pregnancy waits,
knowing that it will happen when it happens and not a minute before it's
ready.<br><br>
My own personal winter has taught me patience, primarily with myself.
"I want to be over this, and I want it NOW!" didn't work
particularly well. Healing happens in its own good way and its own good
time, and there's no point being impatient with it. As a wise woman once
said, "you cannot hurry a tree, a baby, or a hard-boiled
egg." I had to accept that I was where I was, for as long as I
was, because that's where I needed to be, even if I didn't like it very
much. But now I'm not there any longer. It was a matter of
patience.<br><br>
Our winters teach us patience; they teach us that "the journey, not
the arrival, matters". We will get where we need to be when we need
to get there, if we trust in God's patient, tender care for us. It's
especially hard in the midst of winter storms, when the world feels very
dangerous indeed. But that's when faith does its most serious
workouts.<br><br>
I got given a line -- the French call it _la ligne donnée<i>_</i> -- the
line that starts a poem spinning, the first given line I'd had in a
terrible long time. It used to be that when I got a given line, I'd jump
on it and bat it around, the words pouring through my fingertips and onto
the screen -- but this time, I took my time getting home, made a mug of
tea, transferred the laundry to the dryer, fed the cats, checked my
email... The line would wait for me until I was ready to play with
it.<br><br>
"I like the way that winter teaches patience."<br><br>
Yes.<br>
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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no
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