Fly, My Pretties!

Odd Company -- August 29, 2022

Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —

Here we are at the end of August already. Summer is winding down. The lavender has finished blooming and needs to be pruned. In the vegetable garden, the basil is in full flower. The strawberries are over. The last of the peppers are drying on the vine so I can save their seeds for next year. The tomato and cucumber vines are still bearing fruit, but the leaves are scraggly and insect-chewed. Jars of pickles line the refrigerator shelves. The days are growing shorter, and the temperatures at night are dropping little by little.

I’m always somewhat sad to see summer on its way out. I love the warm weather and the many extra hours of daylight. I love the colors and scents of flowers. I love the profusion of fresh fruits and vegetables. When summer goes, it feels a little like saying goodbye to a friend who won’t be back again for many months. I would beg it to stay, if I thought it would do any good. It wouldn’t, of course. Still…

The passage of the seasons is one of many things in life that I have no control over. Sometimes there’s nothing to be done about a situation except wait for it to change. There are many ways to wait, but most of us hope we’ll manage to wait with patience. Ah, patience — the subject of tonight’s issue of Odd Company.

Before I get much deeper into this weighty subject, I highly recommend a little break for this funny, wise song by Guy Clark. You might never have heard of him before, though you’ve probably heard his songs without knowing who wrote them. They’ve been performed by most of the great country singers, including Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Emmylou Harris. I picked this one for tonight because of what it says about attitude. The attitude with which we approach a situation can make all the difference in the world. Here’s Clark with “The Cape,” and an idea that will be familiar to you if you’ve ever thought a towel safety-pinned around your neck might allow you to fly. I can relate.

As mentioned in a previous issue, my husband has been ill and has been on the list for a lung transplant for the past six months. A year ago, he was a very fit guy approaching his 70th birthday. He had what we came to think of as a mild (and benign) condition called hyper-allergic pneumonitis, a sort of super allergy. In his case, it seemed to be an allergy to feathers. We got rid of all our down bedding and clothing, got the couches reupholstered, and that did the trick. For ten years his lung problem was stable and mild. We lived an active life that included a lot of travel and a crowded social calendar. John rode his bike many miles through the nearby hills every weekend.

The pandemic changed our social habits, as it did everyone’s. But through it all, we both stayed healthy. Then last winter, as we were preparing for a two-month stay in Italy, the lung problem suddenly began to progress, and wham! Within weeks, John went from riding all over the local mountain roads to requiring oxygen 24-7, barely able to walk around the block without stopping for lots of rests. Which is pretty much where we are now. Add to that the fact that we can’t travel very far, because if and when the lung arrives, we’ll need to be at the hospital within a few hours at most. Oh. And we must absolutely not be sick with COVID (or anything else) when the time comes.

If you’ve ever known (or been) someone who needed an organ transplant, you know it’s a waiting game of the most trying kind. There’s a shortage of donated organs. (By the way, please consider marking your driver’s license “organ donor” now. I know the prospect is sort of icky. But it’s also one way to make yourself useful even after departing this earthly plane.) Transplanted organs have to match their recipients’ blood and tissue types. In the case of lungs, the donated organs have to be the right size as well. There’s no way to predict when, or even if, a matching organ will appear. It could be tomorrow. It could be years from now. It might never happen at all. As Guy Clark would say, a transplant candidate is “…one of those who knows that life is just a leap of faith. So spread your arms and hold your breath, and always trust your cape.”

Capes and leaps of faith aside, though, what’s needed is patience. Patience is one of Buddhism’s “Six Far-Reaching Attitudes,” also sometimes translated from Tibetan as “The Six Far-Reaching Practices,” or “The Six Perfections.” I like “Attitudes” best, as you might guess. Patience is considered a virtue in most spiritual traditions. Because…well…who doesn’t wish they were better at it?

Both Buddhists and Christians define patience the same way. Patience is the ability to endure discomfort without complaint. All very nice, dear. But how the heck are we supposed to do that? In a nutshell, by approaching it with a good attitude.

It’s mainly a matter of acceptance. Buddhists would characterize patience as a matter of adjusting our expectations so they match reality. We must ask what’s possible and what’s not. It does no one any good to yearn for the impossible. If the situation is something we can’t change, one thing we can do is accept that fact about the world. Acceptance makes it possible for us to be patient — to endure without getting angry or upset — and to understand that there’s nothing to be gained by making ourselves and those around us miserable.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we are more likely to characterize patience as a result of surrender to the will of God. Once I admit to myself that there’s nothing I can do about a situation except trust in a greater, wiser power, the ability to endure without complaint follows naturally.

Both John and I turn out to be decent practitioners of patience — so far, at least. It’s not as hard as it might sound, because in many ways, patience is its own reward. Waiting with acceptance and whatever grace I can muster has allowed me to sleep well most nights, and to enjoy the summer in the many ways that are still open to me. I guess you might say I’m trusting John’s cape, and my own.

I have looked hard for a poem of mine to use as a sign-off for this issue of Odd Company. I had no luck locating one with anything to do with patience. (My thousands of poems have become a little hard to navigate. Organizing them is an ongoing project.) So in place of my own poetry, here is a wonderful poem by Nan Merrill, “Psalm 35,” from her book, Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness.

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PSALM 35

Pour forth your strength into my heart
That I might stand strong!
Encircle with healing love those
Who persecute me through fear!
And say to my soul,
”I am with you always.”

— Nan Merrill

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