I am not a patient man.
But I am quite capable of mistaking idleness for patience. It’s a clever trick. The mark of my last year has often been to do nothing and to think I’m patiently biding my time whereas in fact, I’m just impatiently and fretfully getting nothing done, hoping things will get better all by themselves and when they do, I’ll be ready for them.
But this week, I’m back in Oxford, physically at work. And am I ready?
Not sure.
Now there’s a lake in the park near my house, and at its edge, right by a busy path, a pair of swans have made their nest. The council has built a little fence to give them some privacy, but they’re still never more than a couple of feet from me as I cycle past.
Even so, even so close to people and noise and bikes, for the past six weeks the swans have been taking turns to sit on a clutch of five big grey eggs, waiting for them to hatch. I know this because I’ve watched them. So I also know that they’re not just waiting.
I’ve watched them in sunshine and rain, at morning, noon and night, and they never stop their vigilant work, no matter what. They keep the eggs safe, nudging them together if they roll apart, laying new reeds in the nest, switching places, giving each other a break, waiting patiently, patiently, for their brood to hatch.
The early Christian teacher, St Paul, wrote a wise thing to his friends in Rome.
“If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience”
Now that seems simple: of course we wait with patience.
But I don’t reckon Paul meant my kind of patience, waiting idly for the world to change so I can step back into it. He meant swan patience, the kind of patience where, as we wait hopefully, we continue to love and support each other, to do what’s necessary day by day; to repair our nests and watch over whatever, whoever is more vulnerable than we are.
And when we do that, and the thing we hope for, normality perhaps, eventually arrives, I think that like the swans (and unlike me), we’ll be ready for it.
The swans’ patience was rewarded, and the summer saw them gliding elegantly across Burgess Park lake, cygnets in tow. I hope they’ll be back next year.