Lightkeeper's Journal

Patience is Power

  

The Great Egret

 

Photography by Norma Beaird

Article by Curtis Beaird

 

All situations, even grief, can be about learning. It is our choice.

There is meaning beyond pain. There is purpose beyond the absurd. To lose the feeling of control offers the opportunity to gain mastery over fear.  Patience is the light that shows us the way. It is our choice.       

Never waste a bad situation. What is God teaching us?  Stop. Focus. Listen. If what we hear is a long silence that grows into an even longer silence, is it possible that the message for us is to exercise courage and be still?  To use our strength to be quiet and silent? Attend to the silence. God never shouts.

Waiting, the first cousin of patience, takes energy.

Why waste it on anger? 

Anger robs patience of its power. Anger dilutes our strength of will and leads us into bad decisions. 

Anger makes of us a victim. It costs us what control we do have. It abandons us to defend and explain ourselves.  

Anger, once expressed, leaves us with bridges to repair that we didn't need to burn. Anger, once acted on, leaves us weakened and scrambling for solid footing and a sure direction.

Anger promised power, but once expended, leaves us small and diminished. Anger is exhausting.

Patience reserves the right to speak and act. Patience guards options and discovers possibilities.  Patience reveals the appropriate method, the right timing and even the choice of words. Waiting enables us to gather strength. Waiting discovers the way. Waiting makes us ready. 

We seek control of the situation.

We find it in the practice of patience.

Patience and silence enables us to remain alert and aware. Patience allows us to see the big picture. Its partner, silence, will teach us what we need to know and what we need to do. Patience will show us when to act. 

Patience is a strong mixture of silence, listening and the creative use of our strength of will.  It reveals multiple choices and the substance of decision. While it feels passive, inactive, and possibly even weak, it offers the freedom of self-control.  It enables us to manage impulse and generates the hope that leads to an advantaged future.  

In waiting, we discover the truth of the words of Isaiah,

"…they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk , and not faint.  Isaiah 40:31

Patience is power.

 

 

Copyright 2014, Curtis and Norma Beaird.  All rights reserved.  

 

Looking Toward the Sabbath

 

 Article by Curtis Beaird

Photography by Curtis and Norma Beaird

 

            To say that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has been a strong influence on me is an understatement. When I read,

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy",

I listen and I listen to Rabbi Heschel.  

For starters, he never fails to point me in the right direction......

"Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten. Working under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties, man has no mind for ethereal beauty. But, the spirit is waiting for man to join it.

Then comes the sixth day.  Anxiety and tension give place to the excitement that precedes a great event.  The Sabbath is still away, but the thought of its imminent arrival stirs in the heart a passionate eagerness to be ready and worthy to receive it."

You can see why it was not a hard thing for me to find my way into writing about the Sabbath.  The week has come and gone.  Obligations are suspended. 

The spirit and gifts of the Sabbath prevail.

The Sabbath:  A guiltless moment of reflection and soul rest.  Time when fixing the broken, solving the problem of meeting "their" needs is suspended.  The focus becomes grace, forgiveness and solace for the soul.  

The sound is that of hearing the care of God, experiencing a work of grace, and finding again the song in your soul.  For at least a second, the context of time gives way to the essence of the eternal.

The Sabbath:  That time when the noise of demand, the need to control, the illusion of power and property ceases to hold sway.  The vision and dream are made of gift and promise, love and silence, hope and future.  The soul is permitted the luxury of being still; the mind’s eye envisions the land of promise.

You become quiet.  Demands, both inner and outer are suspended.  The Sabbath offers a moment when we are complete, whole, integrated, fully alive, fully together; one, at least with ourselves.

The Sabbath:  A chance to be comfortable and comforted in an out of control world.  A world short on care and long on sensation and threat.  A world that addresses the dark with a thrill and flees from the healing grace of silence.

The Sabbath settles as well as excites. The hope found in the Sabbath generates the excitement of possibility, rather than the escape of distraction.  The Sabbath heals as well as calls.  The Sabbath collects, gathers and inspires us to the highest and best.  The Sabbath is invigorating.  It shows us more than the obvious and looks past the pain.  

The Sabbath frees the slaves.

Exodus 20: 8 - 11 (King James Version)

⁸ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

¹⁰ But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 

Copyright 2012, Curtis Beaird.  All rights reserved.   

 

How City People Can Live in the Woods and Survive

 

 

Article and Photography

By: Curtis Beaird

So, now you have your dream.  It’s quiet.  The neighbors are few and far between.  The grass is green.  The trees are tall and stately, offering a warm cocoon of longed-for silence.

Now what?

Boredom is real.  Think about it.  We spend our life awash in external stimulation.  Even the maddening crowd doesn’t seem so bad now.  At least when we were crowd dodging, we never realized how numb we were.

Boredom is bad, but numb is frightening.  The silence of the trees.  The quiet magic of the green grass growing.  A yellow butterfly.  Where is the tension, the stress?  Where are the jangling habits of anticipation and complaint that make city life the exciting, exhausting, tasty, angering aggravation that it is?  At least a small burst of road rage lets us know we are alive.

Numb needs risk.  Real risk.  Something has to be at stake for life to taste sweet.  The edge of silence is an abyss calling for a creative response.  The gaping abyss of the woods waits in its frightening silence for us to fill it with something, anything, but, it’s our choice.  Our offering can be nothing or our best.  Again, it’s our choice.  Scary, huh?  The city makes its demands.  It tempts us to believe its illusive promise.  The tall trees stand in a dark void and wait.

City noise, the bungling crowd, teaming malls jammed with stuff, promising delight, asks nothing of us but to survive the traffic and bring money.   We settle for the risk of crossing a jammed intersection.  We settle for the sites and sounds that threaten to overwhelm or satisfy us.  We confuse the creative process with a burst of adrenalin, regardless of how it’s produced.  Our numb remains hidden in the jangle of the city.

The fight or flight choice won’t paint a Sistine chapel.  Passion, faith, risk of real failure and work, will create that and more.  Numb needs risk to become life.  Real risk.  Something has to be at stake for life to taste sweet.  The tall trees wait.

 

Copyright 2011, Curtis Beaird.  All rights reserved.