the key to compassion

last night was the goodbye party for my new friend simone and her family.  i met them a month ago but i almost cried at the end about their leaving.  it was really a perfect party, so i'll explain why. there were tables set up with flowers and african clothes, there was homemade juice and sangria, there were mats all around the yard to sit on, and chickens running and dogs, and cats, and guinea foul and ducks, and children.  it was all afternoon and there was no agenda.  the guests were more than half ugandan, everyone was interesting and real, and the food, oh. my. word.  i wish i could describe.  and then at dusk, out came the dancers, and drummers and the shaking was so fast all the pictures blurred- and notice that little muzungu in the pink shirt shaking right along with them. 

simone has this gift of being present and available when she's with you.  there's no small talk, or filler conversation, she's just real and i love that.  she also has no need to package herself as anything in particular, so you are constantly finding out that in addition to organizing a bakery and a farmers market each weekend at their house- complete with full breakfast, long tables in the grass with tapestries strung up for shade,  she is also a fabulous cook, and a seamstress who makes their sheets, and probably an artist and a yoga guru (but i'm not entire sure about those).  the key is in the not needing to be some-thing and the reason why is because she is so comfortable with being some-one. 

i was thinking about this especially because i've been reading the book Compassion by henri nouwen.   there is a chapter called 'patience' and it's about the relationship between patience and compassion.  he talks about how they share the same latin root- pati- meaning 'suffering'. he says that patience is the discipline of compassion, it's the 'how' in how to live compassionately, it is the way to do it, it is the way Jesus did it.  i found this fascinating because i tend to think of myself as a fairly compassionate person, but a highly impatient person.  so i had a moment of panic: how can i be truly compassionate if i lack the ability to sit still, to wait, to hold out.  but as i read i realized that i had i didn't have the full grasp on patience.  my idea of sitting calming by and putting up with something, was wrong.  he described patience as active, not passive; as something full and beautiful.

"Patience is the capacity to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell as fully as possible the inner and outer events of our lives.  It is to enter our lives with open eyes, ears, and hands so that we really know what is happening."

so i got excited.  now that i can practice, that i can aspire to, strive for, get behind. that's not that hard!

but the next sentence completely called me out.

"Patience is an extremely difficult discipline precisely because it counteracts our unreflective impulse to flee or to fight."

doh!

this is me most of the time when it comes to my greatest area of challenge in the practice of patience.....zoe. when she is having a hard time, when she most needs my patience, i totally want to flee or fight.  i fail to enter these moments of our lives. i tend to want to close my eyes, block my ears and run away which might actually be the better choice then to fight, then to yell at her or blabber on and on about my frustration, or polk my own eye out.

but here it is: "Patience requires us to go beyond the choice between fleeing or fighting....Patience involves staying with it, living it through, listening carefully to what presents itself to us here and now. .....In short patience is a willingness to be influenced, even when this requires giving up control and entering into unknown territory."

i'm sitting with this out on the porch, the sun is setting brilliantly in the sky , and the air is moving just enough, and the sounds of night are being born, here it's easy to be patient, to be full, fully here, fully in the moment, engaged, available, present. these are the transendant moments, the ones when we can feel God. 

unfortunately the world calls, these moments never last, zoe is calling for her shower to be turned on, the power keeps going out, and little boys need to brush their teeth.  and these are the moments when it's so hard to be patient- to have compassion.

but it's not unfortunate really.  it just is.  and it's more real then that sunset because relationships are two way, the night sky doesn't push my buttons and ask me to face things that i'm terrified of like will she ever be able to turn the shower on by herself.

so after calling back for her to turn the water on with her own hands (so i could watch the sunset), i got up and listened carefully to what was presenting itself- my beautiful child had a need, and that didn't need to be judged.  i went inside and turned on the water and stayed with it.  i told her she was way more important and beautiful than a sunset.   i practiced patience so that it would lead me to compassion. 
because that is where i want to be.

i don't want to fight or flee.  i want to be here and enter in my life, senses wide open.  i want to stay with it, even though most of it is unknown territory, and there are parts that are ugly and loud and smelly and scarey.  i even want to live through the hard parts.

i'm thankful to think of patience as a practice and not a character quality that i just didn't get. but simone, you may have practiced this longer, or harder, or it might just be another one of your hidden talents- the key to your ability to BE. thanks for reminding me, i'll miss you girl!