I could sense his presence long before I could see him. The spring sunshine had a cast to it that seemed to make my binoculars crystal clear. Feeling his presence, I slowly glassed the meadow all around me, then the forested edge and finally the steep hill behind the small marsh to the east. There were birds everywhere, but I sensed something more than birds. Letting the field glasses dangle around my neck, I sat back on my heels in the cover of some willow scrub at the meadow's edge.
Five minutes passed and then a movement caught my eye. It was on the steep hill behind the marsh but I couldn't make out what it was with my naked eye. Even with my binoculars, the shape of an old gray coyote was hard to distinguish against the winter-killed grass. The old yodeler was watching me from his bed in the grass, had been all along. The movement that caught my eye was him deciding to stand up, him deciding to reveal his presence. He looked right at me as I watched him with the binoculars. And then, slowly, he faded down the steep hill into some trees at the end of the marsh.
I thought he was gone for good and so I stood up. Slowly I moved into the meadow towards a small observation hummock in its middle. It was one of my favorite spots from which to call spring bears and talk to Carl J. I had spread Carl J's ashes on the little hill a couple of seasons before so that we could shoot the bull and hunt the bear from it in the spring. As I made my way slowly to the hill, another movement caught my eye. The old coyote was standing at the forested edge of the meadow watching me again. I sat on my heels and after we watched each other for a time, I got up and slowly continued my way to the hill. Yodeler continued to watch me, and then he began to move obliquely to intersect my path. He paused some 40 meters from me on a small hummock of his own and watched me make my way to mine. When I sat down in the grass at the top of my little hill, he sniffed, scratched and lay down to watch from his.
We sat together for better than two hours, Yodeler and I. I glassed for bears and he watched me. I called for bears and he watched me. I talked to Carl J. and he watched me. I ate a sandwich and drank a flask of coffee and he watched me. I drained the coffee from my bladder and he watched me. Never once did he move. Never once did he take his eyes off of me. He just patiently, oh so patiently, watched me.
“You old coot!” I said to him at last. “If I was some New Age, tofu snortin', reincarnation believer I'd swear you were Carl J come to tell me how to bear hunt properly. But I ain't and you ain't, so would you kindly get lost so I can bear hunt without you staring at me like that?”
Yodeler cocked his head and continued to watch me. I decided two could play that game. I lay on my belly just like he was, propped my elbows on the grass to support my binoculars and we commenced a staring contest. It took a long time but I was the first one to flinch. I got up, dusted myself off and stomped out of the meadow. It was dusk. Yodeler continued to watch until I was off the meadow. I peered back through the trees to see him finally get up, stretch, sniff and trot towards the forest edge.
By the time I got back to the truck the light was gone and I was enlightened. Wildlife often display great patience but the old yodeler coyote was better at it than anyone I had run into before. Perhaps he was guarding his territory; perhaps he was just curious; the truth is I don't know. For whatever reason, Yodeler had decided he was going to watch me until I left. That was his decision. Patience was what enacted his decision.
I guess I've always thought about patience as something akin to aggravated inaction or P.U.ed passivity or frustrated procrastination (perhaps because I am not very good at any of that stuff). But when I think about Yodeler's patience it was anything but inactive or passive and he certainly didn't seem like he was just wasting time. He was totally and fully and purposefully engaged in what he was doing. Patience was how he related to me.
When I think about patience biblically, the first thing that comes to my mind is God's patience. I think it was Karl Barth who talked about God's patience as being a “purposeful concession of space and time.” That sounds something like Yodeler's patience as he related to me. Over and over again in the Bible, God takes the initiative to deal with a sinful humanity through the action of patience. God's action of patience is driven by a commitment to love. It is demonstrated in everything from the withholding of an immediate death sentence at the disobedience in the Garden (Gen 2:17, 3:14), through the repeated choice not to reject a disobedient Israel (Hos.11:8-9), and finally through the deferment of the final coming of Christ with judgment (2 Pt.3:9). All of these choices are engaged through the action of God's patience, driven by love, in order to give opportunity for repentance. God's patience is powerfully engaging and active stuff, sort of like “power waiting.”
And here is the thing. Like God takes the initiative of patience with me, God invites me into this patience thing too. The most compelling invitation is in Jesus' “parable of the unmerciful servant” (Mt.18:23-35) but it is throughout the Bible. Like God power-waits over me, so I am called to power-wait over my teenage daughter, my wife, my neighbour, even my enemy. And the beautiful thing is, from a biblical perspective, patience is not only a God-exercised initiative but it is a God-given one too … a fruit of God's Spirit (Gal.5:22) to the life lived in its power. “Now may the Lord direct (our) hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 3:5)
