Patient Trust (Part 3 of 3)

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

Patient Trust Part 2 of 3

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.

- - - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Patient Trust (part 1 of 3)

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.

- - - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

In the midst of my busyness, O Lord,
remind me to slow down and savor each moment
as a gift from you.

As I move frantically from thought to thought, project to project,
remind me that you are a God of abundance, to scarcity,
and there is time enough for all that you have called me to do.

- Katherine L. James, “Midday Prayer”, Alive Now, July/August 2011

Happy Birthday America

If we have not peace
it is because we have forgotten
we belong to each other.

- - - Mother Teresa

Prayer

Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.

-Henri J.M. Nouwen