Contemplative practice is a school of many aspects of the Divine character, including patience. A contemplative lifestyle requires us to be patient with the unfolding of things: patient with ourselves as we learn to gracefully welcome and detach from thoughts, patient with the action of the Spirit as we await the slow bloom of God’s fruits in our lives, patient with others as we walk the path to God together, but coming from very different places and moving at different rates. A contemplative engages Reality with patience and waits for revelation patiently. A contemplative knows that they will never see the truth of the egg if they don’t patiently await is hatching, never see the truth of the flower if they don’t patiently await the bloom, and likely never see the truth of the other person if they don’t patiently await the emergence of the of the True Self – their own or that of the other. The contemplative gaze is not a quick glance, but a “long, loving look at the real,” as Jesuit theologian Walter Burghardt once described it. So, take the long way on your walk. Pause to behold the scene in front of you. Let that conversation run long, and begin to behold the moment as God does.