Mother Melody,

Thanks for posting this.

I am an impatient person myself... mainly because the rest of my family also belonged in this category, as we were affected by the culture of the place we lived in- Hong Kong, where it emphasizes more on quantity than quality.

Anyways, I am out of my undergraduate degree for a little over one year already and I am still unemployed. While part of it was my fault (laziness for the first 6 months I was out of college and pretty much throughout undergrad, blowing interviews one after another, and being rather picky about where I work and what sector I worked for.), I didn't have the best timing in terms of entering either (California state budget cuts, national economy could be going to recession, and high gas prices, to name a few).

As for my spirits, I am rather positive for a person who's waiting to get his/her career started for one year now. I give God a lot of credit for this. He sorta introduce me to contemporary christian music through some young adults leaders I met in my diocese during my years as an undergrad. Because I am the kind of person who always likes to find new ways to get myself going, when I heard some contemporary christian music for the first time, I thought, "It is perfect because I believe in positive motivation, I like music, and the fact that it has some Christian elements to it couldn't be more perfect." Indirectly, I got some spiritual strength in the process, which is how I got through this "down time".

So, I think not only God has a timetable for each of us, but also know specific ways each of us need to get going.

- Bill Wong

I am sorry, but it is not patience that is required for waiting for the stop light or the grocery line or waiting on God but humility.
It is not patience that we need to relinquish control of our lives but humility.

Please read below. This is where patience is required.

An Excerpt from Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx by Heidi B. Neumark

found at: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/excerpts.php?id=14128

This spiritual memoir by Heidi B. Neumark, a pastor of Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx for 19 years, portrays the faith, stamina, and hope needed to work for change in a community known for its violence, poverty, and unemployment. Here is an excerpt on the practice of patience which is an essential ingredient of hope.

"At times, the ongoing instability of the inner city threatens to overwhelm the lives and structures of our neighborhood and our work as a church. AIDS, asthma, shootings, inadequate housing, addiction, and unemployment persist, in spite of all the positive changes. One life is transformed and then, another falls apart. Beautiful homes go up, apartments are renovated but so many new homeless families are crowding into the Bronx Emergency Assistance Unit office that many have ended up sleeping right there on the floor. A woman finally gains the strength to move away from an abusive husband, but she must then leave her leadership roles in this church and community too. Her children are baptized, enthusiastic participants in many church activities and then they disappear. A teen leader and mentor to younger children is arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong skin. Another is randomly gunned down. People in recovery enter the workforce for the first time, but the only jobs they find require work on weekends, nights, around the clock in some cases — cleaning homes, washing dishes, tending the homebound. Time for family, community, and church evaporates.

As a pastor I keep wanting to build something stable, solid, and lasting and often seem to be failing. Things progress and then seem to fall back. I've always liked the phrase 'burning patience' quoted by Pablo Neruda when he received the Nobel Prize for literature:

" 'I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid city which will give light, justice and dignity to all.'

"But sometimes my patience wears thin. What does it mean to be patient when young people you love kill or are killed? What does it mean to be patient when we find ourselves mourning more and more young adults dying of AIDS and seeing their children become orphans? What does it mean to be patient when politicians, businesses, and even fellow Christians write off an entire community? And there is plenty of impatience with my private failures too — feeling constantly torn between family and church responsibilities, never enough time to do anything right, feeling that everything is so fragile and might collapse at any moment. . . . — and it will be my fault as the pastor who should oversee it all — and knowing that such thoughts give far too much importance to myself . . . Lack of perspective, lack of breathing space. 'Things standing shall fall . . .' Does that mean me?

"Sometimes when I'm short of patience, I focus on the little things, which I find myself doing more and more. Today, this teenager is going to college, the first in her family to graduate from high school — 'I can't decide whether I want to be a teacher or a psychiatrist or a pediatrician!' Today, this woman is speaking up for justice — 'I sat at the table of history today, Pastor, instead of just reading about it!' Today, this man is experiencing forgiveness. Today, this child feels cherished in the house of God."