Illustration of “Bobby Bumps Goes Fishing”, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, bit.ly/bobbybumpsfishing
Nurturing Elders and Others:
I don’t have time to be patient!
By The Rev. Paul Graves
When I was six or seven, I fished for the first time. My parents didn’t fish, so I eagerly accepted an invitation to fish from a friend and his family. We went to a small, shallow lake near our home in north Idaho. Perch were the preferred fish to catch there.
I was standing on the shore, waiting with my friend for the others who were fishing from a boat a short distance from shore. They had the bait; but I was so eager to try fishing, I dangled my bare hook in the water. Suddenly the line started to get tight. My first fish and no bait!
But it sure wasn’t a perch. It was a small, ugly catfish. I reeled in and dropped it on the beach. My friend’s dad took the fish off the hook.
This important memory came back to me as I read a gentle story from Sue Monk Kidd. Well-known for her novel “Secret Life of Bees”, Kidd’s first writing effort (1990) was actually an inspiring, well-written book on spiritual direction, “When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions”.
She introduces this little story by speaking about wu wei, a Chinese concept that honors “nondoing, actionless action”. “Wu wei is based on the idea that God makes available inside of us all that we need to grow and become whole”. (Kidd, p. 37)
Then she described her grandfather as a lawyer, a judge, and a farmer. “He was frequently busy and conquesting, but I remember also that he sometimes entered into golden moments of wu wei.
He and I used to go fishing on one of the ponds on his farm. He would sit and hold his cane pole over the water, becoming as still as the stumps that jutted up from the water. I usually tired of fishing fairly soon and went on to other things, like collecting dandelions.
One day having given up on fishing, I was playing in his old black truck when I noticed his fishing bait was still on the seat. I remember being surprised that my grandfather had been out fishing an hour or more without bait. I grabbed the bait basket and raced over to him.
“Granddaddy, how can you fish without bait?” He tilted back his hat and smiled as if he had been caught in some delicious secret. “Well, sometimes it’s not the fish I’m here after,” he said. “It’s the fishing.”
Granddaddy had his wu wei moment, though that may have not have been his description. My first fishing experience had no a wu wei to it. I wanted a fish!
Maybe you experience daily life like I do. It seems like every time I turn around — both physically and in my mind — I’m getting impatient about something. Or I see someone else showing great impatience — in his car, in the grocery line, in a disagreeable conversation.
So I wonder: do we find ourselves and others getting impatient because, well…we don’t have time to be patient? I admire people who seem to be able to take their time in most whatever they do.
I asked some friends in Sandpoint about this. “What makes it difficult for you to be patient?” The examples they gave varied, but the basic ideas were reflected in two words: irritation and frustration. An 81-year-old golfing friend expressed his frustration/irritation that he couldn’t do the same things he did 20 years ago.
There is so much could be said about patience and impatience, but my word-limit is closing in on me. So frustrating!
I’m beginning to think that “patience” and “impatience” might well be two other words for “control” and “out-of-control”.
When Granddaddy was fishing without bait, he experienced an inner control/patience. He consciously gave up trying to be in control of fish that may or may not grab his hook.
What daily things control you? What of those things can you release from your need to irrationally control them? We are created to give up control of matters beyond our control. What a challenge to actually do it!
