A friend from the program sent me this meditation tonight.

I was telling him how I wished I could move Emmett’s book along, and how sometimes I feel like I have to force myself to write to keep things moving.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I thought you’d like to see it, too. The title is “Trust in the Slow Work of God,” by the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. (The italics are mine.)

“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 (1881-1955)

Categories: Interesting & Odd The Writing Life

Tagged as: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

jsmith532

Professor,
Communication, Arts, and the Humanities
The University of Maryland Global Campus