Wednesday, August 31, 2022

The Rev. Anne Williamson

Patience

Patience…were you in that line? The one where patience was handed out abundantly – I wasn’t! The topic of patience (or, perhaps, impatience) has been discussed with family and friends a lot recently. It seems I am not alone in my trials with patience. So I was encouraged when in the midst of a major clear-out at home, I rediscovered a prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 20th century paleontologist and Jesuit priest. This prayer helps me remember that I am not on my own on this journey of life. There are divine resources to hand. I am invited to trust in ‘the slow work of God’. So much easier to type than to accept! But I am working on this trust…with God’s help.

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
excerpted from Hearts on Fire