135

Chapter 5
Exercise Patience

A well-known Zen Buddhist teaching story highlights the need to “practice patience” if one intends to make the most of his or her abilities, gain insight, and achieve happiness.

A young man approached the venerable master, seeking guidance. “If I meditate eight hours a day and study the Sutras four hours every night,” he asked, “how long will it take for me to gain enlightenment?”

“Ten years,” the master replied.

The novice was taken aback. “That long?” he gasped. “Well, then, what if I practice for ten hours a day and study for six? How long then?”

“Twenty years,” said the master.

“But how can that be?” the incredulous novice wondered aloud.

The master shook his head and sighed, “For someone who is in such a hurry, enlightenment does not come easily.”

The master knows very well that spirituality doesn’t operate on a timetable. It requires aspirants to exercise patience through those long plateaus during which enthusiasm wanes and hope falters. The process cannot be hurried, and impatience is antithetical to the whole enterprise. The breathless inquiry—how long will it take— 136suggests to the master that this young novice is easily discouraged. Stop thinking about the future, the master advises. Just settle into your practice and learn to enjoy the subtle yet considerable rewards of being fully present for each new and original moment.

This brief story could certainly serve as a guiding metaphor for modern American life. While most of us are not as eager for enlightenment as that young novice, we seem to be in a big hurry to fulfill whatever aspirations and ambitions we do have. One reason for this, Oxford University economic historian Avner Offer argues, is the relatively high level of material well-being most Americans enjoy. For all the benefits it confers, a successful free enterprise system “breeds impatience.” More modest degrees of wealth, on the other hand, “foster reciprocity and commitment.” As an example, Offer cites the declining number of people who are willing to make a long-term investment in their marriages. For some people these relationships are like products purchased at a mall: turn them in if they don’t work out.¹

Sustainability isn’t about the quick fix or the cheap solution. Generally it means making a commitment and trying, as best we can, to honor it. In any worthwhile enterprise, from protecting the environment to preserving a relationship, we are going to encounter difficulties. The good life is not a problem-free life. In point of fact, the process of overcoming adversity often produces some of the most rewarding experiences we will ever have. Human beings need to be challenged to “test their mettle,” as it were. Throwing in the towel at the first sign of trouble or small inkling of distress may be the easy thing to do, but it doesn’t help our self-concept. Most of life’s troubles can be overcome if we are willing to work through them with patience.

Cultivating a New Attitude

Patience—an attribute the Dalai Lama once likened to a muscle— is the key to a committed and meaningful life. Like any muscle, he points out, it can be significantly strengthened through exercise. If your ambition is to acquire tranquility and calmness, an enhanced ability to face adversity, and greater tolerance and acceptance of 137others, “Put the practice of patience at the heart of your daily life,” the Dalai Lama urges.²

As a dedicated distance runner with a long-standing spiritual practice, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of patience and have felt the benefits of these activities begin to spill over into my labor, my loving, and my service to others. In other words, I’ve tried consistently to exercise this “muscle” in order to gain greater fitness.

But even a personal “patience practice” won’t deliver the goods unless a shift of attitude accompanies it. Has there ever been a civilization so obsessed with doing and so uneasy about simple being? In order to cram as much productive and consumptive activity as possible into every waking moment, we’ve steadily reduced the time allotted for discernment and quiet reflection. Hard-charging professionals brag about being able to subsist on six or fewer hours of sleep, largely unaware of the irritability and crankiness it causes.

In his semi-whimsical book The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff recalls one of A. A. Milne’s original stories in which Rabbit comes to call on Christopher Robin only to find him gone, a misspelled note tacked to his front door: “Bisy Backson” (busy, back soon), it says. Rabbit misconstrues the message and imagines that Christopher is referring to a person and not to his own absence. Reflecting on this episode, Hoff suggests that our Western world is literally crawling with Bisy Backsons—people who are always out, always on an errand. Convinced that they are saving time by doing as much as they possibly can, they fail to recognize that compulsive busyness strips their experiences and their relationships of much of their savor.

Americans (and the billions who imitate us) have established 138an unhealthy and unsustainable standard. Nothing is more important than increasing our productivity and living life to the hilt. Ignoring natural circadian rhythms, society operates “24/7”—colloquial shorthand for a population that abhors the whole notion of downtime. Exciting as it might seem always to be on the go, the consequences of such a lifestyle are less than salutary. The ancients knew this better than we. Idleness is a prerequisite for deep reflection and philosophizing, Socrates insisted, and his Far Eastern contemporaries reached a similar conclusion. In Chinese, the pictograph for busy is composed of two characters: heart and killing. Daily life in traditional societies may have afforded fewer modern amenities, but lack of leisure was not generally one of its drawbacks. Busyness was regarded as a form of oppression that dulled humans’ ability to feel and to care.⁴

People’s career expectations are conditioned by a civilization that’s in perpetual overdrive. It is assumed that one must move up the ladder quickly, in emulation of the well-dressed, perfectly coiffed attorneys and business types portrayed in the media and who one presumes are representative of that class. Even members of the clergy are susceptible to such messages. I was once accosted by a young colleague at a ministers’ retreat—a man who had recently been ordained and hadn’t yet completed a year of service at his first church. He wanted to know how long he’d have to work before he could compete for a congregation as large as mine. I wanted to reply that parishioners aren’t stepping-stones and that ministerial success isn’t measured that way. That man has since moved into another field.

A half-century-long spell of hyperactivity has made many of America’s major metropolises less desirable places to live. Freeway gridlock, sprawling developments, derelict inner-city neighborhoods, overburdened infrastructure, and a surfeit of cheaply constructed architectural eyesores are the order of the day. Much of this mess is the consequence of rapid, underregulated development that hasn’t given residents or their elected representatives a chance to see the big picture and come up with better long-term approaches to the growth process. Sadly, any attempt to slow things down long enough to anticipate and resolve problems associated with urban growth is routinely characterized as “antibusiness.” 139

No Speed Limits (on Anything)

Those who would throw caution to the winds and forge ahead offer the typical, tempting incentives: more jobs for residents, greater tax revenues to support government services, and lower prices for consumers. In light of such tangible benefits, waiving environmental rules and granting zoning variances seem a small price to pay. Alas, such promises have often proved illusory. Creating extra slack in the regulatory system has destabilized rather than strengthened many American communities and contributed little to people’s quality of life.

Nevertheless, circumspection is frowned upon. The prevailing sentiment is to eliminate as many hindrances as possible so that business may be conducted in a cheap and expeditious manner. While serving as secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, Lawrence Summers spelled out the formula to be followed: This administration, he announced, “cannot and will not accept any ‘speed limit’ on American economic growth.”⁵

According to philosopher Mark Kingwell, “Speed is our preeminent trope of control and domination.” What we are just beginning to realize is that ever-greater speed and the constant pressure applied on people to hurry and hustle place a tremendous strain on everyone. We are, Kingwell warns, “always speeding up to a standstill, a spasm of useless speed that masks the coercion of contemporary society as it undergoes a simultaneous acceleration and terminal shutdown.”⁶

People’s hopes and expectations with respect to their own economic future reflect this general tendency. Eager to get rich quick, millions of Americans invested heavily in Internet-related corporations during the 1990s, expecting to see the price of these hot new stocks soar quickly into the stratosphere. News of successful IPOs dominated the business pages, but then the dot-com bubble burst, the NASDAQ lost two-thirds of its value, and millions of retirement nest eggs disappeared in a matter of months. Not to be deterred, middle-class investors turned next to real estate in their quest for a fast fortune. Alas, “irrational exuberance” led once again to tens of thousands of imprudent investments. 140After reaching historic highs in late 2007, stocks again took a nosedive, with the Dow Jones losing nearly fifty percent of its value in the space of just a few months. For too many Americans, the slow, sustainable route to financial security through saving money and living within one’s means holds little appeal. We invest the same way we spend: impulsively and impatiently.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the “coalition of the willing” followed the same pattern. Despite the repeated efforts of close allies, foreign policy experts, and U.N. inspectors to forestall military action against Saddam Hussein, the White House was adamant. Iraqi WMDs pose a clear and present danger to the world community and must be eradicated immediately, we were warned. To underscore the urgency of the situation, Condoleezza Rice invoked the specter of nuclear holocaust: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” she said ominously. Those who questioned this assessment were likened to the appeasers who underestimated the ruthlessly ambitious Adolph Hitler prior to World War II. Impatient and mendacious, the Bush administration chose to remove Saddam by force, British journalist Jonathan Freedland writes, “rather than … do the long, gradual laborious work of nurturing democratic and liberal elements in the Arab and Muslim world.” How was Soviet power ultimately neutralized, he asks? Not by a hasty invasion of an Eastern satellite but by encouraging the internal forces of dissent over several decades.⁷

Freedland reminds us that sustainable, free, and democratic societies are not normally or reliably created by fiat. A conquering force can install a puppet government, but ultimately the impetus to tear down a Berlin Wall or topple a colonial regime must come from within a nation. The Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh offers an appropriate metaphor for our own country’s recent behavior: A man is riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, sees him and yells, “Where are you going?” The man on the horse yells back, “I don’t know. Ask the horse.”

“I think that is our situation,” Thich Nhat Hanh explains. “We are riding many horses that we cannot seem to control.”⁸ 141

How Impatience Sullies Everyday Life

Impatience and inattention reduce the quality of our personal lives as well. Having been conditioned to spend most of our waking hours in the fast lane—desiring to do, see, and achieve as much as possible in the shortest time permissible—we deprive ourselves of rich pleasures that have served and sustained human beings for centuries. “Between friends,” an ancient Chinese aphorism states, “the fifth cup of tea is the best,” but today who has time for even the second cup?

Reading is a remarkably fulfilling activity that loses its luster in an impatient world. Although for a number of years book sales steadily increased as major chains like Border’s and Barnes & Noble expanded and Amazon.com made ordering books cheap and easy, the average person actually spent less time reading and did so with less comprehension.⁹ Reading requires powers of sustained attention and the patient, uncluttered quality of mind that fewer people seem to possess these days. “Readers aren’t viewers,” novelist Ursula Le Guin observes:

Events that in the past drew families and friends together for celebration, sympathy, and support have also been compromised. Invited to a wedding, people skip the ceremony and attend the reception. Even more impolite is an increasingly common behavior I’ve witnessed at end-of-life celebrations. It would have been practically inconceivable fifty years ago for someone to walk out of a funeral service before it had concluded, but such irreverence no longer even raises an eyebrow. Whenever I conduct a service that stretches beyond an hour—which often happens when an assortment 142of friends, family, and colleagues deliver tributes—I notice people beginning to stir and consult their watches, and a few of them quietly rise to make a not-so-discreet exit.

A certain percentage of mourners appear to have convinced themselves that by simply showing up, they’ve paid their respects in a proper manner. But what does it say about us when not even the deceased and his or her surviving family deserve more than an hour of our time? Better not to show up at all than to make a public spectacle of one’s lack of patience.

And then there is the grief process itself. In former times, society sanctioned a lengthy, even indefinite period for loved ones to recover from loss and reorient their lives. The funeral or memorial service signaled the beginning, not the end, of a long, difficult inner journey. Today people are made to feel guilty if they mourn and mope for more than a few months. “Get over it and get on with life” is the not-so-subtle message our impatient civilization sends the bereaved.

This is a dangerous trend, for studies have shown that foreshortened mourning can gravely affect the individual’s mental and emotional well-being. “Integrating loss into the depths of one’s soul does not take place in sound bites,” the noted grief counselor Alan Wolfelt warns. Professionals agree that the grief process cannot be rushed and that individuals should be allowed to do this work in their own way and without feeling pressured. Nevertheless, contemporary mental health practice has more and more fallen in line with managed care’s emphasis on rapid treatment and recovery. Wolfelt’s paraphrase of the Beatitudes captures the latter’s mechanistic approach to grief work: “Blessed are those who mourn quickly and efficiently in response to abbreviated counseling techniques, for they shall meet our criteria for successful treatment.”¹¹

Impatient to Save the World

Volunteer activity that promotes the common good is another arena where people need to alter their expectations. Effective social witness requires more than a casual, occasional commitment, but people willing to make a sustained effort are in short supply. In my own experience, it has become increasingly difficult 143to find people willing to work on long-term projects or to serve a term or two on boards and committees.

To be sure, Americans remain eager to contribute, and they still embrace the idea that volunteerism is in everybody’s interest and that it is a noble thing to do. There is widespread appreciation for the soup kitchens, free clinics, literacy councils, and Habitat for Humanity-style housing providers that fill the void when public, tax-supported services are lacking.

Nevertheless, we are impatient for change. We want rapid reassurance that the effort we have put forth has made a difference; and if evidence of that is lacking, we tend to become disillusioned. But endeavors to teach an illiterate adult to read, clean the detritus from a lake or stream, or lobby the public safety commission for a stoplight at a busy intersection take time, and the process isn’t always straightforward and free of hindrances. Many of today’s volunteers have a low threshold for frustration and throw in the towel too easily. Several days of exposure to Jun-San, a transplanted Japanese Buddhist nun who has inspired many people with her tenacity, humility, and boundless patience, might shift our perspective.

Since coming to the United States, this wisp of a woman has dedicated herself to peace and justice causes. Known as “Walks Far Woman” by the Lakota people with whom she has marched in solidarity, Jun-San has overseen the construction of Peace Pagodas across the country. At the end of a long day working on one such project in upstate New York, her coworkers found Jun-San sitting in a deep hole, excavating with a kitchen spoon. Startled, they asked her what she was doing. In her own evocative grammar, she replied: “I was tired using pick. I very always hitting stone. It hurt. I can sitting do something. Digging with spoon.” ¹²

It didn’t bother Jun-San that her modest implement wasn’t going to get the job done by noon tomorrow. She was contributing as best she could to a collective effort that reflected her deepest values, and that was all that mattered.

During the thirty years I’ve practiced professional ministry, many well-intentioned men and women have shared with me their 144desire to live more generously, responsibly, and caringly, knowing that the good life requires giving as well as taking. They come seeking advice about worthy organizations they might join or volunteer positions or social causes in which they could invest time and talent. I have always tried to support such sincerely expressed interest and to make appropriate recommendations.

But lately I’ve begun to feel less comfortable with these conversations. For too many of the men and women I meet, humanitarian service seems to be a fleeting impulse provoked by a twinge of guilt or a temporary swing outside the normal arc of middle-class ambition. The impetus to assist others or to bear social witness often follows hard upon disappointing election results, a devastating hurricane, or some comparable perturbation in the moral universe.

The problem is lack of patience and perseverance. Among those who hear the call to serve, relatively few respond in a consistent manner. Having made a commitment, people soon realize that to fulfill their responsibility, something else in life will have to give. Like a daily spiritual practice, service requires self-discipline: setting aside time, making space, removing mental and emotional obstacles, and interrupting habitual patterns. But also like a daily spiritual practice, a patient, persistent pattern of volunteer service can deliver long-term personal and social dividends: intellectual growth, a more open heart, collegiality with good and caring people, and an improved self-concept. One middle-aged volunteer reports that he feels fortunate to be able to put in time at the hospital. His motives are not altogether altruistic, because in the course of serving the sick, injured, and post-surgical, he gains perspective. “They help me realize that you can take things for granted until you get sick, and then you stop and think about what life really means.”¹³ To make the good life last, we should aspire to this level of maturity.

Unfortunately, work commitments, housekeeping responsibilities, media, and recreational allurements prevent many of us from making a serious commitment to a larger community. Last hired, our volunteer role is often the first to be fired when push comes to shove and busy schedules need to be pared down. 145

This problem is likely to persist as long as Americans keep piling so much onto their plates. In order to perform good works in a sustainable manner, some of the unnecessary and meaningless clutter must be eliminated. We’re all familiar with the adage, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” Not necessarily. Volunteer tasks tend not to be fulfilling for the person who is already overburdened and are probably accomplished more effectively by someone who has some extra time to give.

Relatively few Americans are in a position to become dedicated full-time activists, but it is critically important to the long-term health of our society that we carve more time out of our workaday lives for the nonremunerative roles that originally shaped and have helped strengthen America’s unique civic culture. The fact is, both our natural and social environments need far more attention than they are presently getting.

As the main character in an old British television series, Dr. Who was a science fiction hero whose quirky wisdom became a notable feature of this popular show. In one episode, his adversary challenged the virtuous doctor, “Do you really think your puny efforts can change the course of destiny?”

With a canny wink, Dr. Who replied, “No … but I might just tamper with it a bit.”

That’s the outlook we need to adopt. The point is to do a little tweaking here and a little meddling there, faithfully expecting that with time the arrow of destiny will begin to curve a degree or two in a more humane and just direction.

Strengthening the Muscle of Patience at Mealtime

What steps might we take, as individuals and as a society, to strengthen the muscle of patience? An obvious place to begin is with eating—an act practically everyone has to perform on a daily basis. Despite a good deal of recent publicity about the “slow food” movement, the way most Americans eat—on the run—suggests that it hasn’t made a very deep impression. In a “fast-food nation,” MREs 146(meals ready to eat) aren’t just for the military anymore. We expect our victuals to be dispensed and consumed in the twinkling of an eye, and if at all possible, while we’re commuting or cruising the Internet. But mindless, impatient eating not only deprives us of one of the real pleasures in life; it can be downright dangerous. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, dining while driving (seventy percent of Americans admit to doing so) is a leading cause of automobile mishaps. Fender benders aside, people who wolf down their food typically consume more calories and are thus more susceptible to weight gain and are likely to join the growing ranks of the obese (a health hazard almost as significant as smoking).¹⁴

Slow, mindful eating is a practice many Eastern teachers emphasize—placing one’s full attention on the sensations that accompany each simple gesture and each succulent bite. Feel, smell, and taste the section of a juicy tangerine before separating and popping the next one into your mouth. Stretch the process out, and allow the tranquil, appreciative feelings that mindful eating produces to filter into and inform your other daily activities.

Slow Down and Live a Little

Several passages in the Tao Te Ching, the ancient book of Chinese wisdom attributed to Lao Tzu, underscore the centrality of patience among the virtues of the sage. “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, and compassion,” Lao Tzu announces in chapter 67. Patience, he continues, “accords with the way things are” while impatience and impetuousness cut against the grain. “Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what is almost ripe,” the sage warns.¹⁵

Whereas today’s society extols speed just about everywhere—on the highways, on the Internet, on the assembly line, and in the checkout lane—monastics and spiritual teachers have for centuries counseled just the opposite: be selective and be slow; do less but attend more closely to what you do. That, the wise say, is the surest formula for achieving satisfaction. Or as the celebrated novelist Willa Cather wrote: “Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.”¹⁶ 147

As a lifelong athlete and one-time avid competitor, I know something about the dangers of “going out too fast” and pushing up against my mental and physical limits. I have always had to remind myself that acquiring a competitive advantage in any single race is far less important than cultivating a lifestyle activity that can anchor my wellness up to and into old age. It took time, but eventually this muscle called patience became and to this day remains the cornerstone of my practice.

Amby Burfoot won the Boston Marathon in 1968 and has indulged his running habit for over forty years. He says that he’s “never known a runner who had as much patience as he needed,” which is why so many running careers end prematurely with injury or burnout. Eager to prove themselves, many novice competitors overestimate their abilities or underestimate how physically and mentally demanding a long race can be. As a result, they end up having a miserable (and quite often injury-plagued) experience. “Distance running requires you to take the long view,” Burfoot writes. “It takes weeks and months to get in shape. Give yourself time. Don’t make hasty and unnecessary mistakes. Remember: life is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself accordingly.”¹⁷

If we hope to sustain a relationship with an intimate partner, patience must again become a priority. “Love at first sight” prompts some couples to tie the knot too quickly, before those first powerful waves of libido and emotional attraction have had time to settle down and a better rounded and more realistic picture begins to emerge. Abbreviated courtships don’t necessarily produce disappointment, but they do entail greater risk. From their very inception (when compatibility has yet to be determined) through the peaks and valleys (when elation and despair must both be dealt with) and across the long plateaus (when we must pay attention to love’s more subtle rewards), domestic partnerships require patience. “It may take a lifetime to learn to make a relationship flourish, but that happens to be exactly how long we have,” writes Robert Taylor, whose quarter century of marriage gives him some credibility.¹⁸

When we are patient and don’t demand of loved ones and friends strong doses of supercharged stimulation, when we give 148ourselves more mindfully and less fretfully to the activities that constitute ninety percent of customary relational life—cooking, housekeeping chores, Scrabble games, strolling, biking, grocery shopping, or simply watching birds at the feeder—our chances of experiencing deep, abiding soul satisfaction increase accordingly. “Stirring the oatmeal love” is how Robert Johnson describes the sentiment that is “content to do many things that ego is bored with.”¹⁹

Lessons from an Unlikely Subject

Patience can enhance the quality of our friendships as well. In this respect, that enduringly popular television series Seinfeld, despite its fictional, comedic nature, may give us something serious to think about.

Jerry Seinfeld’s friends are a collection of odd ducks. There is George (insecure and manipulative), Kramer (impetuous and inept), Elaine (needy and clinging), and an assortment of other regulars with whom the level-headed, emotionally contained Jerry consorts. But despite the dramatic differences in their temperaments and the irritation and distress they occasionally feel toward each other, these characters stay connected. Time and time again, fences are mended with honest explanations, apologies, and simple acts of atonement. The members of Seinfeld’s crew refuse to give up on each other. Why? Because the unquantifiable sustenance that friendship brings to their lives is well worth all the extra effort it requires.

Real friendships demand an investment of time and attention—more of both than many of us think we have to spare. Without them we don’t have the necessary resources to work through the misunderstandings and misdemeanors that inevitably crop up in any relationship where there is a strong emotional attachment. Seinfeld’s characters have all made a tacit but mutually understood commitment “to be there when it’s not convenient or easy” and to remain “steadfast in the face of change and crisis,” as Mary Pipher puts it.²⁰

Crows, Trees, and the Gift of Patience

In a poem entitled “About Crows,” the late John Ciardi suggests that patience is a principle only those who are more advanced in 149years can appreciate. His words are worth quoting at length:

• The old crow is getting slow
• The young crow is not.
• Of what the young crow does not know
• The old crow knows a lot.
• At knowing things the old crow is
• still the young crow’s master.
• What does the slow old crow not know?
• How to go faster.
• The young crow flies above, below,
• And rings around the slow old crow!
• What does the fast young crow not know?
• Where to go.

Even if young crows, young lions, and young Turks are more interested in sprinting than in slogging through a marathon, ways can be found to make them aware that patience and persistence have advantages and can both deepen our understanding and increase our pleasure. Like paying attention, this key can be taught—indirectly if not directly. Dena Wortzel of the Wisconsin Humanities Council recalls receiving a lesson in patience from her third grade Washington, D.C., science teacher. “She took my class out on the lawn in front of the school building and asked each of us to pick a tree,” Wortzel recalls.

Kids dashed from tree to tree, looking for … what? What were we searching for in the tree we would call “mine?” I wish I could remember. I know the teacher gave us some time and did not tell us how to choose. What she did tell us was that we would visit our tree regularly throughout the spring to watch and record the changes it went through.

Wortzel found her tree, which she did faithfully return to and closely observe throughout the year. In the process, she learned that “there is all the difference in the world between looking at something and living with it,” as Joseph Wood Crutch once put it.²¹ This was my first “love affair” with a tree, Wortzel writes, and equipped with patience and newfound powers of observation, she has “been acquiring such lovers ever since.”²² 150

This is a very different picture of the good life than our culture typically provides. Wortzel’s teacher managed to instill in her and perhaps in a few other eight-year-olds an appreciation for the slow rhythms of arboreal life, and for at least one person the lesson stuck. If more of us could apply the same logic to the slow growth of the spirit and the gradual maturing of our relationships, the whole world might be far better off.

Closed on Sunday

How might patience become a societal as well as a personal virtue? Perhaps we would be wise to reconsider the practice of “Sunday closings” that most communities have abandoned as inconvenient and uneconomic. Could we not have one day a week when nonessential commerce ceased and people were encouraged to be nonproductive and to take their ease for at least twelve hours? To be sure, computers and the Internet will always pose a problem since they enable us to produce and consume continually and from the privacy of our homes. Still, a bona fide, culturally mandated day of rest would restore a positive and healthful precedent.

The measure could be presented not as a sacred obligation but rather as a way to safeguard our personal, public, and planetary health. Sunday closing would give everyone and everything an interval to recover, to reconnect, to reflect, and to savor. Shuttering stores, encouraging people to leave their cars in the garage, organizing neighborhood events, banning advertising for a single day— one can easily imagine how such simple measures would elevate the tone and tenor of our common life. In addition to the precious resources conserved, the net reduction of mental and emotional stress felt by the general population would, I predict, be noticeable.

This whole idea of a dedicated “day off” is of very ancient lineage. The fourth of Yahweh’s Ten Commandments composed over 2,500 years ago enjoins the Hebrews to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Scholars agree that of the Old Testament’s many injunctions this was one of the most significant. The ancient Hebrews took it so seriously that they were reluctant to even defend themselves from attack on the day of rest.²³ 151

In ancient times, Sabbath observance entailed far more than attending worship services and fulfilling formal religious duties once a week. Nor was it equated with “leisure” in the way we think of it today—as a casual, “twiddling your thumbs” kind of interlude from labor. Sabbath provided an opportunity, as Wayne Muller suggests, “for other things—love, friendship, prayer, touch, singing … to be born in the space created by our rest.” A convention that our dour Puritan ancestors misconstrued as a day of privation and gloomy soul-searching possessed far more positive and life-affirming connotations in the beginning.²⁴

By including Sabbath observance in the Decalogue, the ancient Hebrews wished to underscore that it was not merely customary to rest; it was in the very nature of things periodically to suspend all productive activity. According to the Genesis story, following six stupendous acts of creation even God rested—not out of weariness (for God is indefatigable) but because the Almighty is not a Bisy Backson who must always be up to something. At the culmination of creation, God stops. For now, the Deity has done enough. The new cosmos may not be perfect in all respects (after all, it contains wily serpents and suggestible Homo sapiens), but still it is good enough.

Whatever deference previous generations may have shown toward it, the Fourth Commandment is undoubtedly the one least honored and observed today. Not only secularists but the vast majority of Jews and Christians violate it with impunity. The pressure to treat Sunday (or Saturday, in the case of Jews and Sabbatarians) as nothing special is almost irresistible. A few years ago a nationwide chain of stores that sells Christian merchandise succumbed to the capitalist imperative and opened its doors for business on Sunday afternoons. Corporate officials disingenuously explained the shift as a “way of fulfilling its calling to provide … Bibles, books, and other Christian resources to their customers.” In response, The Charlotte Observer’s Ken Garfield acidly observed that it is “another sign of the culture turning Sunday into one more day in the rat race.”²⁵ The commandment most in need of reexamination and renewed emphasis, then, could be the Fourth—not 152least because in failing to honor it we have surely made our world a less pleasant and more perilous place to be.

The concept was broadly inclusive and intended to benefit all creation. Ancient peoples knew very well that proper stewardship of the earth required periodic suspension of cultivation. Farming is a taxing enterprise, but it also requires patience. If the agriculturalist is too ambitious and does not allow the land to lie fallow—to rest—it will soon be exhausted. Sabbath law ensured that this important principle of stewardship would be taken with the utmost seriousness and that farmers would not be tempted to reap short-term gains at the expense of future generations. We discount such perennial (and now scientifically validated) wisdom at our own peril.

The Land Itself Grows Weary

North America boasts some of the most productive farmland on the planet, and a significant portion of humanity depends on the American soil to meet its food needs. Yet intensive industrial production of cereal grains has seriously degraded much of the continent’s best and most arable acreage, while overgrazing threatens to reduce millions of acres of marginal grasslands to desert. With worldwide demand for animal protein and ethanol-based fuel rising, farmers eager to maximize profits are abandoning “best practices” by pulling acreage out of land banks and tilling areas highly susceptible to erosion.

The desire of farmers to make up for years of marginal existence is understandable. Those who grow the nation’s crops have suffered from low commodity prices in recent decades, and many have been driven out of business or are barely hanging on. Nevertheless, the soil needs time to rest, and impatience with the natural rhythm of cultivation and recovery may in the end prove the surest road to ruin.

Creating or restoring fertility to the soil does take time. The process can be artificially hastened with chemical inputs, but there will come a point—as with performance drugs in the human body—at which crop yields dwindle and further transfusions make little difference. 153

Over the years the eco-poet Gary Snyder has learned a great deal about the forest ecosystems of Northern California, and he has adapted himself to nature’s slow and patient rhythms. Fifty years is not a particularly long period for a forest to naturally reestablish itself after fire or logging, he writes, and if we try to hurry the process along with replanting or salvage operations, we are likely to sabotage the languorous forces that create a rich, healthy environment. “This is bold and visionary science and contains the hope that both the Forest Service and industry might learn to slow down and go more at the magisterial pace of the life of a forest,” Snyder says. We are beginning to understand that maintenance of the soil and preservation of wildlife diversity are critical to a sustainable forest system and that these are not tasks that can be rushed.²⁶

Patience and Community Improvement

Although they are often tempted to cut corners, farmers and foresters do understand better than most the fallowness principle and the importance of patience. Functionaries in the economic and political spheres have yet to learn that lesson.

What if, in the spirit of the Fourth Commandment, municipalities placed a complete moratorium on new development once every seven years? Such an interlude would give the entire community an opportunity to study and evaluate the achievements and the mistakes of a six-year cycle of activity. With time set aside for review and analysis, a county or city would be in a better position to resist the pressure that private interests bring to bear on public officials to “fast-track” proposals or risk losing their business.

This is not to say that most American communities, including my own, don’t already engage in planning processes that include input from many stakeholders. Reports are generated and circulated, public feedback elicited, and guidelines established, all of which is commendable. Yet very few citizens participate in or even pay much attention to discussions that can have a major impact on the character of their community. Why? For pretty much the same reason we don’t step into volunteer roles. The average American has so many 154interests and commitments to juggle and is pulled in so many directions that assimilating and evaluating new and often technically challenging information is just more than they have time for.

A sustainable approach to community development would create an appropriate interval for citizens to focus and to engage in deeper reflection. In an earlier era, the town meeting afforded citizens this opportunity. That practice endures in hamlets and villages throughout Vermont, where, as Bill McKibben notes, “the traditional meeting lasts all day. People take off from work, and there is often a potluck supper. … Town meetings can be dull … but they are a school for educating residents about public affairs; for making them citizens.”²⁷

Due Deliberation

Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin have sketched out a plan for a Deliberation Day to precede every major national election, an undertaking similar to the town meeting but on a much larger scale. Creating a pre-election “holiday” with the proper incentives for citizens to study and discuss candidates, party platforms, and ballot initiatives would help counteract negative “hit-and-run” advertising and those deceptive sound bites that erode citizen’s confidence in their representatives and in the entire electoral process. Without due deliberation—the patient process of sifting and winnowing opposing political claims—a society composed of free, informed, and active citizens cannot be maintained.

Americans pay lip service to democracy and to the spread of democracy abroad. Yet our own democratic traditions are perennially threatened by ignorance and apathy. It was encouraging that in the 2008 elections more young people cast ballots than ever before and turnout in many places set modern records. Still, too much of our political information is delivered in sound bites and is bereft of context. Deliberation Day would be a step in the right direction because it aims to remind voters that “voting is not an occasion for expressing consumer-like preferences, but a crucial moment in which they are confiding ultimate coercive power to representatives who … may determine the fate of billions of their fellow inhabitants of the planet Earth.”²⁸ 155

Patience is a hard sell because many people feel that there is already too much foot-dragging and deliberation. What kind of society bottles up important legislation for months and years at a time; leaves prisoners to languish on death row for over a decade before their appeals are exhausted; makes a person wait months for a comprehensive physical exam; permits young people to dillydally for years before finally finishing their college degree? Even a patient person can become indignant about the glacial pace at which some of our sectors seem to operate. Why can’t more of the world’s necessary business be expedited, we ask?

The scale and the increased complexity of our modern social, political, and judicial systems have undoubtedly slowed some processes down. The interests of many different parties must be considered, due diligence done, and necessary precautions taken. While it’s important to strive for efficiency, delays will be inevitable and, often as not, prudent as institutions attempt to meet new contingencies and growing demand. Too often in recent years, an unwarranted sense of urgency has caused our leaders to cut corners—authorizing the invasion of another country and passing problematic legislation like the PATRIOT Act and a $700 billion financial bailout package without sufficient understanding of the risks.

How One President Made Patience Work

The passage of comprehensive civil rights legislation in the mid 1960s was one of the twentieth century’s most notable political achievements, signaling the official end of almost a hundred years of discrimination reinforced by Jim Crow laws. The magnitude of that shift is demonstrated by the election, some forty years later, of a mixed-race United States president, Barack Obama. It seems appropriate to end this chapter by highlighting the role that our third key—patience—played in that historic process.

President Lyndon Johnson was a key player. Remembered and criticized as the American president who ratcheted up our entanglement in a war that cost America fifty thousand lives and left scars that still are visible today, Johnson often isn’t given sufficient credit for helping secure the civil rights of American minorities or for ambitious social programs that cut the American poverty rate in half. 156

Johnson made some egregious mistakes, and none so serious as his desperate, dogged pursuit of victory in Vietnam. By failing to pay attention to what was really transpiring in Southeast Asia, Johnson was unable to adopt a more sensible approach to the region’s problems. As a result, he remained wedded to an unsound policy for far too long. But with regard to civil rights, President Johnson presents a model of patience intelligently and effectively practiced.

As the campaign for voting rights was heating up in Alabama and violence in Selma had begun to capture the nation’s attention, the president felt pressured to act formally and decisively to defuse the situation. Send in federal troops to neutralize the local police and prevent hostile whites from injuring nonviolent protesters, civil rights leaders begged him.

Johnson was himself a white southerner who previously had supported continued white dominance. But he knew that the days of Jim Crow were drawing to a close and that the rules of the game would have to change. Within a few months he would sign into law the landmark Voting Rights Act that successfully enfranchised millions of black citizens. At this critical juncture, however, he took a calculated risk and ignored calls for federal intervention. Johnson wasn’t vacillating, and despite the appearance of indifference, the president knew very well what he was doing. According to Ronald Heifetz, by permitting the drama in Selma to play out a bit longer on national TV, “he prevented premature closure … and waited to seize that moment when he could address the issue of racial justice rather than merely diffuse the dissonance.”

Through deliberate inaction, in other words, Lyndon Johnson put the American people on the hook and made it impossible for them to ignore their own responsibility for the “harsh reality of black people being beaten for requesting an equal right to vote.” Had he defused the situation prematurely, it would not have become the transformative event it subsequently proved to be.²⁹

Patience is the key that enables us to sense, as Lyndon Johnson did in this instance, when “ripeness” occurs. Patient people appreciate the importance of timing and won’t allow themselves to be pushed into a decision or an action against their better judgment.