Haste Not Hurry

I love this poem Waiting by John Burroughs.  It is a great reminder as we strive to make Esperanza a reality.

Waiting

by John Burroughs

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea

I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,

For lo! My own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays—

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways

And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me,

No wind can drive my bark astray

Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it has sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own, and draw

The brook that springs in yonder height;

So flows the good with equal law

Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;

The tidal wave unto the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,

Can keep my own away from me. 

In the book The Majesty of Calmness William George Jordan reminds us that there is a difference between hurry and haste:

It [hurry] seeks ever to make energy a substitute for a clearly defined plan…Hurry is a counterfeit of haste. Haste has an ideal, a distinct aim to be realized by the quickest, direct methods. Haste has a single compass upon which it relies for direction…Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries. If you are sure you are right, do not let the voice of the world, or of friends, or of family swerve you for a moment from your purpose. Accept slow growth if it must be slow, and know the results must come… Let us not be impatient, chafing at delay, fretting over failure, wearying over results, and weakening under opposition. Let us ever turn our face toward the future with confidence and trust, with the calmness of a life in harmony with itself, true to its ideals, and slowly and constantly progressing toward their realization.

The Pitfalls of Hurry

For Family Home Evening on Monday I read the section on "Hurry" from the book The Majesty of Calmness by William George Jordan. In this section there was the following specifically related to education:


The educational system of to-day is a monumental institution dedicated to Hurry. The children are forced to go through a series of studies that sweep the circle of all human wisdom. They are given everything that the ambitious ignorance of the age can force into their minds; they are taught everything but the essentials,--how to use their senses and how to think. Their minds become congested by a great mass of undigested facts, and still the cruel, barbarous forcing goes on. You watch it until it seems you cannot stand it a moment longer, and you instinctively put out your hand and say: "Stop! This modern slaughter of the Innocents must not go on!" Education smiles suavely, waves her hand complacently toward her thousands of knowledge-prisons over the country, and says: "Who are you that dares speak a word against our sacred, school system?" Education is in a hurry. Because she fails in fifteen years to do what half the time should accomplish by better methods, she should not be too boastful. Incompetence is not always a reason for pride. And they hurry the children into a hundred textbooks, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, then into a diploma, then into life,--with a dazed mind, untrained and unfitted for the real duties of living.

Felt this was very well said and something we will want to remember at Esperanza.