Kentucky farmer and writer Wendell Berry (b. 1934) wrote a poem called, simply enough, “How to Be a Poet” with the whimsical subtitle “(to remind myself).” Even if you have no ambition to write poetry yourself, I still encourage you to visit the Poetry Foundation website and read the poem in its entirety: for Berry’s advice to poets could almost word for word be profitably offered to contemplatives and aspiring mystics.
Just a few of the gems that dance through this poem: “Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet” … “patience joins time to eternity” … “Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air” … “Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it.”
I could easily offer a reflection on any of these, but since his insight into patience is what first caught my eye, let’s go with that one. To walk the contemplative path means to dance at the place where time and eternity are not-two. Ram Dass exhorted us to “be here now” — for it is only in the present moment that we can touch not only eternity, but truly the face of the Divine.
But then there’s patience. Ay yi yi! I grew up with my mother intoning “Patience is a virtue” whenever I made it clear that for me patience was in short supply. I don’t think it helped me to get more patient. Patience is #4 on the list of the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), behind only love, joy and peace. The Greek word that is translated as patience is μακροθυμία — macrothymia, which literally means longsuffering. Perhaps the macro in macrothymia points us to Wendell Berry’s fascinating insight, for whether it is a single moment of linear time or the serene timelessness of eternity, perhaps to find that place where those two are, in fact, one requires a patient long suffering indeed.
Suffering implies receiving and holding the pain and the turmoil that life seems always ready to send our way. Long suffering: an ability to persevere in that sacred holding. This is not easy: as anyone undergoing chemotherapy can report, suffering rarely gets easier as it goes along. There is no gold star or medal offer to us when we suffer long or well. Patience is its own reward, and that reward is a unique opportunity to relate to time more deeply, more presently, more eternally. And in all of this, the Spirit is present.
Quotation source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/41087/how-to-be-a-poet