What's the pace of Nature?

Question:Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience...Emerson.

What is Patience?

Thank you for your comments!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience...Emerson.

What is Patience?

Thank you for your comments!

My first thought was that, since I am nature, nature's pace must therefore be my pace!

But from what I think I know of Emerson, he would hold that nature and humanity are not co-equal. And yet they are co-equal — all participating in a universal concept of over-soul. He was heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy, and in turn actually influenced it as it comes to us in the West today.

Following the pace of nature may simply be a metaphor for doing things season by season, resting and growing, declining and dying, just as nature appears in all things.

Transcendentalism, Emerson's coined religion, never really caught on, but it continues to influence to this day in popular culture, Unitarianism (which at first rejected but later accepted Emerson's key teachings), post-modrenism and what's called New Age.

His writing is often dull, but frequently that boredom bursts out with shiny literary pearls. I'm glad I was introduced to him, but happier still that other writers (C.S. Lewis, Francis Scaheffer, James Sire, et al) showed how not to be taken in by a transcendental leap.

Emerson flourished at a time when American religious scholarship and vital ecclesiastical life was on the wane. His great mind found few equals in his day to stand against his teaching. Evangelical scholarship blinked and lost New England and was set back 100 years during Emerson's time.

Following the pace of nature sounds good from the Ivory Tower of academics, but in real life, humanity needs infrasturcture, cities and public sewers, tall buildings and trips to the moon.

Nature is good if you are the cat; a little less so for the mouse.

blazin and laxin!

wow what a great qustion, i for one am not the one to answer good luck . pateince btw is the ability to put up with bs for a time period in order to receive somthing better after words

Patience is to keep sending answers in YA in hope to reach a higher level.

Patience is the ability to progress at a pace which is neither faster than or slower than nature's own course.

Mankind very often forget that. We can see the results when mankind hurries and tries to get to the Press Room with some big discovery BEFORE it's time.

Mankind then spends several years or decades back paddling with explanations of "what we meant was .... yada, yada, yada".

But when mankind researches, studies and then acts, nature is usually fairly kind with the results.

Nature doesn't force things to happen. Natural events simply happen when they are supposed to. Nature does not fret and stress. It just is.

Many people, including myself, attempt to follow this practice of natural patience.

Check out the philosophy of Taoism (Daoism) and the concept of Wu Wei.

To get you started, here's a link discussing the parallels between Emerson's transcendental ideals and Taoism. There's even a book on this specific topic!
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/...