PHOTO: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
After an “on the porch” picnic of barbecued ribs, homemade applesauce and slaw, steaming cornbread, and fresh fruit, our small group moved to the living room for prayer and a report from one member of her recent trip to Africa where she had presented workshops on centering prayer and mid-life transitions to religious communities in Zambia.
Part of our prayer was reflection on wisdom from paleontologist,theologian, and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The adapted reading spoke to my soul, impatient and disheartened with my life’s current situation.
Rather than comment on the reading, I will share it here with confidence that it will speak to the heart of many others. The text did not have any notes identifying the source (though it appears to be taken from a letter)or the editor Teilhard’s words.
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We would 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 may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you. Your ideas and values 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 and acting on your own good will) will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit, gradually forming within you, will be. Give God the benefit of believing that God’s hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”
© 2010 Mary van Balen
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