A week after surgery, here are a few thoughts on the experience and on the idea of patience.
(BTW, I am recovering well. Thank you.)
There are many interesting bon mots about patience. For example, Saint Augustine (354 – 430 ) wrote: Patience is the companion of wisdom.
Yes, wisdom may help us to be patient, I believe. When we have the wisdom to see beyond the present situation, we can endure with patience.But I think it may also be that patience, or at least being a patient, may help us towards wisdom as well. More of this shortly.
Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) has suggested that if we are able to see present sufferings in this way, we may even be grateful for them. ‘We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.’
The noun ‘patient’ is used today only for people who are clients of medical services. We are called a patient when in hospital, at the doctor’s or the dentist, physiotherapist, etc..
In these contexts, yes, we will most likely do a lot of waiting.
Here is a quite significant meaning for the word ‘patient’. We are attending, waiting, and reaching out for our health, or well-being.
To be a patient is to be a person who receives care and who is engaged towards healing or growth, even if that may mean our eventual demise, in the hands of good people caring for us. This I think is something really worth recognising, about the value of being ‘laid up’ for a while. We take time out, whether voluntarily or unexpectedly, and we can use the time to find our bearings, value the things that are important to us, and reflect on what we have done and what we may want to do in the future.
Many years ago the late and wonderful Rev. David Griffiths, a Baptist pastor in Melbourne, wrote a small pamphlet for give to people when unwell. It was about getting better. There he suggested that being ill for a time meant not only that we needed to get better in our bodies, but we could use that time as a patient, waiting, to reflect, perhaps to pray, talk with people in a less hurried and more open way. Our lives could be better because of that time as a patient.
Being a patient is healing. Being patient is part of our healing.
As already mentioned, one of the significant elements of this sense of ‘patient’ is that we allow ourselves to receive, to be subject to the reality of our illness or need. We also allow ourselves to be variously subject to others: sometimes they stick things into us, or cut things out of us, they touch us and in some instances control even our most fundamental activities—our breathing, our heart and brain and so forth. We are in their hands.
In addition, though, our healing is also in our own hands. It is a co-operative effort, waiting upon healing. Others assist and encourage; we do our bit, such as resting, keeping quiet, or doing the required exercises in breathing, movement, and so on. But there is also that other element, the sheer mystery of healing itself, inherent in nature, in our bodies, and in the spirit of life itself.
I think God is part of all this: not waving a wand, not intervening in the realities of life and the world. More likely, as the patience of the earth, the universe, the life of all life: growing, suffering, healing, becoming. Not everything is healed. Not every life is saved. But in it all, life persists. Healing happens and invites new being, new becoming. If ever there is a patient, it is the world, the earth, the spirit of all creation.
It is good to take the time to know this, and be thankful.
Thank you Frank. I am glad to know you are recovering well. I often remind people who are recovering that once we had a time called convalescence, a lost art in many ways. We forget that the psalmist says God gives his beloved sleep. Well, that’s as good an excuse as any!