Waiting…
Once, during a time of great uncertainty in my life, a time when I knew where I’d been but had no idea where I was going, a dear mentor of mine gave this to me.
The wise and beautiful Patti Mitchell was an elder, one of many who’s appeared in my life exactly when I needed what she had to teach. This had been given to her at a similar time in her own life.
Since receiving this so many years ago, I’ve read it a thousand times, and have passed it on to many of you during your own Transitions, your own Great In-Between.
It seems fitting to share it here, now, at the change of the year, change of the seasons, change in our lives.
May you draw strength from this as I have.
Waiting
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 at 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.
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 them 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.
From a letter of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Wishing just the right blend of adventure and peace, wisdom and wandering, movement and stillness, to you and yours in 2013.
~Wendy :)
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