Patience is the ability to hold still under threat until we can discern what is at stake. Patience demands neither passivity nor docility, but a fierce attentiveness to what is really happening.

The medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas observed that patience girds us “to endure immediate injuries in such a way as not to be unduly dejected by them.”

Transforming Our Painful Emotions: Spiritual Resources in Anger, Shame, Grief, Fear, and Loneliness
Evelyn Eaton Whitehead & James D. Whitehead

Background on Evelyn Eaton Whitehead & James D. Whitehead

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