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brothers, doggedness, faith, James, joy, Meg Wheatley, perseverance, persistence, sisters, steadfastness, success, tenacity, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
The beginning of the Letter of James says this today:
Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (JAS 1:1-2)
These are days when it seems that our perseverance is being tested in many ways. Meg Wheatley, who wrote a book of that title, speaks of a persevering person as “one who sees through to the end,” or “one who does not yield.” It includes notions of maintaining our activity in spite of difficulties and is synonymous with tenacity, steadfastness, persistence, doggedness…My favorite notion in Wheatley’s introductory remarks is this: In Chinese, the character for perseverance is often the same as the need for patience.
On a mundane level – which is where most of us live all the time – I see perseverance as simply putting one foot in front of the other to “keep on keeping on.” But here is the key to success, I think. We cannot do it alone. Regardless of how strong we think we are or how capable of achieving success on our own, we need each other in order to survive. Once we conquer resistance to that reality, we are at least half-way there.
Plants are amazing metaphors, I think, for the seasons of our lives. I have only two green plants in my bedroom now and although I smile at them and greet them as I come and go, I am sometimes rather inattentive. Happily, I know they are both always willing to forgive me. One is a Christmas cactus that is not a great indicator of the coming feast as it tends to flower at Thanksgiving – or sometimes whenever the inclination to burst forth gets hold of it. This year, however, it seems to have heard the Advent cry of “Come!” and, although with only one bud, is right on schedule to flower around – if not on – the actual feast of Christmas. I am always surprised at the budding and never mind whether or not it skips a year or comes unexpectedly because it is strong and requires very little care. Steadfastness is its gift to me.
This morning I read Meg Wheatley’s reflection on the word steadfastness. I was trying to find something to redeem my world from all the racist experiences I heard about or saw on the national news yesterday. All the care of neighbor for neighbor that was imaged over the past week in Texas with no reference to preferred status for rescue seemed washed away in the same kind of horrific visuals and speech that were manifested during the recent incident at Charlottesville. I have no place inside me to find comprehension of such division and prejudice. I thought we had come farther on the road to acceptance of diversity. The question before me this morning is whether or not I will stand up and use my voice in situations that call out prejudice of the kind that I thought had been conquered. Meg Wheatley calls me to a challenge.
