Patient Practice

My mother is a great writer. Her novel, written in the eighties about her life in the Yukon, makes me weep every time I read it. For years she wrote a personal column for both the Toronto Star and the Montreal Gazette and she had many fans.

Every so often I'll get a long email from her about the Great Dane she and my father are raising. One of my sisters suggested she start a "dog blog".

Yesterday I helped my mother set up a free blog account, much like this one. It was challenging. Her computer is a dinosaur and my parents live in the sticks outside Chicago, which may or may not have something to do with their Internet connection being as slow as molasses.

I sat patiently on the phone with her as we went through the procedure, step by step. There were lots of hiccups and she almost gave up a few times but we persevered and finally achieved success.

The miracle of this little story is that I was able to stay calm throughout the process and be kind and helpful. Believe me, when I use the word miracle I am not being grandiose.

I used to be the kind of person who would lose my temper in an instant. Lose it.

Example: I'm moving house. I'm trying to get a wicker chair through a door. It's too big. Instead of turning the chair on its side and taking the time to manoeuvre it slowly, which would have surely worked, I pull and I wrench the thing so hard that I shred the edges and, once through the door, whip it across the yard.

That was years ago but a pretty standard illustration of my life-long inability to act in a patient manner.

I haven't just willed my way into becoming a patient person. I've done a heck of a lot of inner work and I have had a great deal of help. Therapy, support groups, spiritual direction. I'm not perfect and I fall short all the time but yesterday I spent an hour on the phone, with my own mother, helping her start a blog and I did so cheerfully and with lots of love in my heart.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters.

Inspiring Message of the Day: Change is possible. We do not have to remain bound to who we think we are. We can let go of old behaviours and practice new ones.

BTW, become a follower of http://doggedblogchicago.blogspot.com