Patience, Ted, someone will reply to your topic soon.

You see, we are testing your patience.

Hello Ted and welcome to WonderCafe,

I confess that I have never heard that particular quote.  I googled it and you are the only online occurence that I could find.

As a saying I don't think it works as patience is essentially waiting for something whereas a lack of standards would embrace anything.

Patience as a virtue is perhaps, more easily confused with obstinacy.

Grace and peace to you.

John

 Actually, it is easy to be patient about something that really does not matter.  If it matters a lot, patience, the capacity to wait, may truly get tested.  I think the saying addresses people who allow things to just not matter and justify themselves as being patient.

Oh, I can wait.  I don't come on often enough to get impatient.

Hi Ted,

Is that patience Ted, or is that apathy?

Again, that sounds more like apathy than patience to me.  Granted they might want to self-justify their apathy as patience.  I think the lack of passion gives that away.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Ted       This is my take on Patience---There are 2 types  Human love patience and Bible love patience

Bible -Love Patience

Love is patient ---- It denotes the state of mind which can bear long when oppressed, provoked, calumniated, and when one seeks to injure us; Patience is long suffering--It does not surrender to circumstances or succumb under pressure, You remain consistently the same no matter who gets in your face. It is a fruit of the Spirit.

Human - Love Patience

Love is patient ---It denotes the state of mind which has a short fuse ----Emotions rule -as long as things are going our way we are patient . We may have patience to wait in traffic but loose our patience when our children or spouse do something to set us over the edge  . It is a fruit of this world not of the Spirit.

Blessings 

I think that if we choose to (if that happens to be the right choice for our lives - I don't believe that it always is) we can be patient in love - from a safe distance if necessary.

Good point John,

But, then, apathy can be viewed as a lack of standards.  It is very hard to distinguish, "It doesn't matter," from, "I don't care."

Now, there is an interesting juxtaposition, patience with passion.  How do the two go together?  We often tend to regard passionate people as impatient.

Hi Ted,

It certainly is a lack of visible standards.  Assuming that surface defines all the substance below would be, I believe, a mistake.

I may be apathetic about a particular issue.  To expect me to be apathetic about all issues would be mistaken.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Ted,

I do not think that they are necessarily juxtapositional.

Passion is how I feel about something.

Patience is how I act about something.

They exist on different planes.

I can be passionate about say, the CFL, without going ballistic every time someone disses it by attempting to promote the feeble and failing glory of the NFL.

Well . . . I could in theory.  My practice lags somewhat.

I can demonstrate the same passion by not watching the NFL, purchasing only products that advertise during CFL games or merchandise that only bears the brand endorsed by the CFL.  

Again, I could in theory.  I'm not that keen to throw my money at corporate sponsors.

What about social change?  I could climb barriers and raise flags.  I could throw rocks and attempt to go nose to nose with the local constabulary in riot gear.  I could parade bruises earned by crowd control measures or I can dig in and be prepared to be the last person standing simply by sheer stamina.

William Wilberforce was patient.  Martin Luther King was patient.  Gandhi was patient.

I think it would be a mistake of tremendous magnitude to presume that either of those three was dispassionate.  They wanted change.  They were not about to run-off half-cocked to get it.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Further to John's good point, perhaps my memory is a bit lacking.  Maybe the saying I recalled could have been, "Too many people confuse the difference between patience and apathy," or something similar.  This would fit with the thinking of an aquaitance who considers patience, "a highly over-rated virtue," and regards it as an excuse.  Personally, I hold patience, the capacity to wait or to bear with ..., as a virtue to which I can strive and I admire patient people.  I do have to admit that I cannot always tell if a person is truly patient or if the situation just does not matter to that person.

Ted.

Biblical Patience is exceptional ... it just lies there apath'etically ... unless someone probes the depths of its meaning and then the following powers erupt ... without knowing God was resting ... there in that clean book, that few put their dirty hands on for it must remain pure ... virgin ... undirtied by mortal thoughts and thinkers ... it cannot be altered (Roman Brutish thinking). It even was once called Vati Canous ... a sacred word that few gather anything from the underflow ...

Mine is actually quite foul I've been told ... because perhaps of all the marginal scribbling and highlighting moors ... meaning highland and down in the same word ... but hoo dah thought ... of all the ups and falls there? Sort of like quantum actions ...

Well, God is infinite. Time is nothing to him, so he can afford to be patient.

With us humans it is different. We are implicated in time, and don't have very much of it.

(Unless, of course, we align ourselves with God and become as gods. But this is a sin ;-)

Quick, quick, says he bird, find them, find them.

Humankind does not have very much time for reality.

-T.S. Eliot

1 Corintians 13:

 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

-----

We could use more of that.

It's listed as a characteristic of love.

Patience is not exclusive to love, but love mainfests it.

When it's a characteristic of love, it's in partnership with kindness, with rejoicing in truth, with trust and and hope; and it is in the absence of pride, envy, boasting,self-seeking, ready anger and dishonouring others… and memory of wrongs done.

MP,

Is this some kind of alien love ... distinct from the church?

And then that comment on memory of things done wrong ... the delusionary ... or just unconscious mind ... "My Lord I don't remember"   a ridiculous answer to the prodigal question ... answered by many politicians, CEO's and tyrants of all sorts ...

Below the horizon the oppressed ... in the gaseous laws on fugal nature  ... don't confine the ethereal within Eire ... it'll explode on the first spark ... the Big Bang redundancy ... but alas mortal learn slowly ...

I was just being strictly BIBLICAL for a change, Buoy.

MP,

I'll accept that good ole ph' art ... a legacy as St Paddie as crapau on regeneration ... ... a wee spot on PEI?

Just maybe the saying should have read "Too many people confuse the difference between the virtue of patience and the sin of sloth," as impatient people may accuse those who readily wait pateintly of being slothful while slothful people may justify their inaction as patience.

If an emotional character waits long enough some understaning will arrive ... are mortals sloe to learn? Look around us ... environmental power of suggestion!