Patience

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A month or two after we arrived here on O'ahu, I brought in a bare stalk of plumeria and put it in a glass of water. I changed the water every day or two and hoped. After several weeks, it started to weep at the top and grow a lighter green with just a hint that something might be stirring inside.

So I put it in a great big container full of rich fertile potting soil on the lanai by the front door; a bare green stalk in a big white pot. I watered it every day or two and hoped...for at least four months.

This morning I went to water it, and my face lit up and my heart lifted. A gift of beautiful precious fragrant yellow blossoms; two! with a whole cluster of buds yet to bloom.

Patience disguises itself as passivity, but there's nothing passive about it, is there? Quiet, steadfast, nurturing, attentive, committed, unfaltering, grateful...wholly active; just at a different pace.

Update 4/15 - Mulling this over some more, seems to me patience is sustained incremental acts of faith over time...er...sumpn' like that...maybe not faith, maybe hope, maybe...oh, I dunno...flowers sure are purty, though...