Again. I have to say that patience is the virtue that I have the hardest time keeping a big enough supply of around here. For some reason, it's like...well, what's the ingredient that I'm most likely to be out of when I go to make a recipe? Something perishable, like cilantro. Come to think of it, that's a great analogy, because once you put cilantro in a bag in the fridge, it's good for about 2 days. Then it starts to stink and exude brown stuff. Yuck.
And it's an even better analogy because, good heavens, that stuff makes so many things so much better! Like patience. Hmm. I have to say, I love cilantro. It's difficult for me to understand those who don't like it -- and if someone doesn't like cilantro, often they really don't like it.
But I digress. Cilantro is also pretty easy to grow oneself. I have grown quite a bit this season, and it's so rewarding. I just went out back and clipped a bit here for guacamole, a bit here for salsa, a bit here for salad. MMM. This way, too, I didn't have brown-goo syndrome in my refrigerator, which is terribly sad. Why DO they sell so much at one go? Does anyone really use that much cilantro before it goes bad?
This is another thing about patience: it's much better to grow your own than to try to count on an emergency prayer here or there in order to get it...you may just find brown goo instead. I often seem to. So I should learn a lesson from my cilantro: work on growing (with God' help, of course) a good supply of my very own patience, to be used when necessary. It definitely makes most things better.
Some of my cilantro has now gone to seed, and I'm looking forward to collecting those seeds to keep growing my own cilantro. Another good lesson: let your patience grow so much that it creates flowers and then seeds. This way, you have a stash of mature patience, you can use the seeds to grow more, and you can -- with proper tending -- use your store of patience to create (with God's help, of course) more of the patience that you need.
I have two cilantro plants that I haven't planted in the garden yet. They're not terribly robust and need LOTS of watering, since it's the heat of the summer and they're in tiny little pots on the deck. Again, another good lesson about patience -- or really any virtue: connect this virtue with the rest of your spiritual life so that it gets lots of nutrients from your regular (hopefully) sacramental life. Don't consider an outsider, adopt it into yourself and try to make it a part of you.
There, I'm convinced. Cilantro is one of the best herbs -- tasty and instructive!
So the next time I'm tempted to yell at my daughter for behaving like a baby (okay, she's only 3!) and making me late...for Mass (yes, always good to preface an attempt to get to daily Mass with lots of yelling; you'll feel especially foolish when you get to the church and discover that there isn't Mass today. Just saying.)...I'll remember the lessons of cilantro.
