Quotes about Patience

There is no straight line to Goodness, to Love, or to God. And thank God, Grace is always retroactive.

Contemplation is waiting patiently for the gaps to be filled in, and it does not insist on quick closure or easy answers. It never rushes to judgment, and in fact avoids making quick judgments because judgments have more to do with egoic, personal control than with a loving search for truth.

God does not come uninvited. God and grace cannot enter without an opening from our side, or we would be mere robots. God does not want robots, but lovers who freely choose to love in return for love. And toward that supreme end, God seems quite willing to wait, cajole, and entice.

God does not change, but our readiness for such a God takes a long time to change.

in fact, that's largely what it means to be loving. You can hold for them what they cannot yet hold. You can transform for them what they cannot yet transform. You do that by not returning their negativity and fear in kind, as most people will do.

God seems ready and willing to wait for, and to empower, free will and a free "yes." Love only happens in the realm of freedom.

Trust the process.

All that each of us can do is to live in the now that is given. We cannot rush the process;

Stop trying. Stop forcing reality. Learn the mystery of surrender and trust, and then it will be done unto you, through you, with you, in you, and, very often, in spite of you.

God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent the very Sympathy and Empathy of God. And it's okay if it takes a while to get there.

Be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. —T.S. ELIOT, "East Coker" from the Four Quartets

Physicians, though they put their patients to much pain, will not destroy their nature, but will raise it up by degrees. Surgeons will pierce and cut but not mutilate. A mother who has a sick and self-willed child will not cast it away for this reason. And shall there be more mercy in the stream than there is in the spring? Shall we think there is more mercy in ourselves than in God, who plants the feeling of mercy in us?