On the virtue of patience: a Yom Kippur reflection

I was a child when I was first told “patience is a virtue” – a phrase attributed to the 14^th century English poet William Langland. In my case it took a while for the message to sink in.

Over the years, however, and perhaps amplified by the COVID experience, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of the phrase.

My lesson in the true meaning of patience began with a case that took 15 years to achieve a positive result. I was contacted by a person who had borrowed my book on Australian Citizenship Law from his local library, trying to navigate how to challenge his wife’s cancellation of her citizenship approval.

The woman had been subjected to a truly dispiriting ordeal. She had received a formal letter congratulating her on the approval of her Australian citizenship application. But, with that, she still needed to take the oath (or affirmation) at a ceremony, for the actual status of Australian citizen to be bestowed. Yet, before that oath was taken, the Minister cancelled the approval. There had been a difference between the date of birth on her original documents and the later ones – all clearly explained by her in her application – but suddenly not believed by the Department.

There began a glacial journey to right that wrong. There were ‘Freedom of Information’ applications; the Ombudsman got involved; there were several merits review hearings in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal; and, not to mention, several Federal Court applications. She was a person with no criminal convictions, who did years of valuable work in the care community and was of absolutely no danger to anyone whatsoever. The emotional and psychological toll on her and her husband was immense.

Her third application for citizenship was finally granted. I felt like a marathon runner when I attended her citizenship ceremony and experienced the greatest joy on witnessing her take the oath and become an Australian citizen. It clearly demonstrated to me that patience is a virtue.

I also learned patience in my active citizenship work, not only the time it took to interview more than 50 trailblazing women lawyers, but also my work to get that material included in the curriculum. The National Library of Australia’s oral history collection now includes these varied oral histories, available to the public through an associated exhibition.

But having established and launched the exhibition, the question arose, how could it be used as an educational tool to inspire young men and women to become active citizens themselves? Someone suggested raising funds to develop curriculum materials to assist teachers to enable students to use the exhibition as a resource. Having then raised the funds, it took me time to find someone to navigate the Australian curriculum framework and to help develop the materials. Then, COVID set in, and a few years went by.

But patience and persistence meant that three years later, the links between the oral history project and the National Library of Australia’s existing online digital classroom ultimately landed, with the NLA launching curriculum materials for Year 10 students. The materials support the teaching of the ‘Building Modern Australia and The Globalising World’ as part of the Australian curriculum. You can listen to me explaining the collection and I encourage you to share this far and wide.

As a sixth generation Australian descendant of Henry Cohen, a Jewish convict transported to Australia, my own history and experience as a Jewish Australian (or Australian Jew), has been a constant frame in my analysis of membership and community.  

It may have been for that reason I was asked in early 2020 to interview Arnold Zable for the ANU/ Canberra Times' Meet the Author Series on his then recently released collection The Watermill. I was very disappointed when COVID lockdowns shut down the event.

Again, patience was required. In March 2023 I met Arnold, at a minyan, sharing the sadness of the loss of our mutual friend Danielle Charak and we revived the interview idea. A year later, and four years after it was planned, the interview finally happened at the ANU Harry Hartog bookshop. You can watch my conversation with Arnold Zable on The Jewish Independent.

The interview ranged over his extensive output between 1991 and 2020, drawing attention to the links and synergies and comparisons between Jewels and Ashes and The Watermill.

In drilling down into the beautiful stories that are presented in The Watermill they remind me, as a person interested in the relationship between the citizen and the state, of the power of the state. My work is often motivated by protecting the individual, through law, from the abuse of state power. As Zable writes, “Humans will always lose their way, come to their senses, and lose their way again. There will always be tyrants to be overthrown and tyrants plotting to replace them”.

In the chapter ‘Republic of the Stateless’ I love the play on words – stateless people are without a national structure/governance – they have no protection – whereas the concept of the Republic – is one of governance – a Republic of Statelessness is a play on the state of statelessness. And the ongoing tragedy of Australia’s brutal immigration policy, from Federation forwards, which drives citizenship policy, is poignantly told throughout all of Arnold’s work, including the refugee stories, the stories centred on Indigenous Australia and the tragic Siev X sinking.

I hope you agree after watching it, that our patience and persistence in ensuring the interview happened is of value to you too and, when projects seem to be taking forever and are seemingly out of reach and unrealisable, you too are coaxed to recall that helpful injunction from childhood – patience is a virtue.

For readers with the time and ‘patience,’ you can read a longer version of this article here.