Lawspeaker's Challenge - Patience
Having missed last month’s deadline I was going to write about procrastination, but I never could get around to it……….
I am not a patient person by nature. Having found Asatru 18 years ago (thank you Mr. McNallen!), I am ready for all our Folk to find their way home. Everywhere I see so many of our people who are spiritually lost, their malaise manifesting as depression, anxiety, drug abuse, and the Ten Thousand Horrors that plague modern civilization.
In the Olden Days, like, say, around 2010, the frustration that I felt often manifested as impatience: impatience at the slow check-out clerk, slow traffic, and anything that didn’t move at a fast-enough pace. I wanted things to change; I wanted everyone around me to see what I could see so clearly. When they couldn’t see it, or wouldn’t, I wanted to give them a good shaking!
Don’t get me wrong, though. It wasn’t all about Asatru. I was also busy at work, with my three young boys, with a too-busy modern life.
I’m not sure when that all changed. Whether age has given me a better perspective or my meditation practice is finally working, or whether the progress that the AFA is making just has me in a better frame of mind overall, it’s hard to know. The one thing I know for sure is that the more patient I am the better things seem, including the response of the people around me.
I still get impatient, and there is plenty of Road Rage to go around (I mean, don’t those people even know what the term “SLOW LANE” means??). Overall, though, I almost always get through my day without boiling over. One reason, certainly, is my confidence that the gods have us well in hand, and our petty annoyances are nothing to lose sleep over.
I cannot remember where I heard it, but “despite all indications to the contrary the universe is unfolding as it should.” Trust your gods, trust your Fylgja, trust yourself. The better you act, the more likely that the cashier, busboy, or mechanic will be to want to join you in your wholeness. We are right, and we will prevail.
Witan Allen Turnage
