“The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.” Lucretius
I am not a very patient person. I expect change to happen immediately when I deem it to be obviously necessary. I expect change to be visible. I expect change to happen through action rather than passivity.
Earlier this summer, on a hike through Arches National Park, I was struck with the beauty of slow change. Change that takes millennia. Change that lasts. Change that has patience at its core.
I thought Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a French philosopher and Jesuit priest (as well as a trained paleontologist and geologist) might have some spiritual wisdom to offer me. His lifetime of work with rocks and God has proven useful to me numerous times on my Christian journey. I found the following quote from him - it illustrates what Arches National Park is trying to convey to me
“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
- Merci Père Pierre.
Written by: Rosa Flinton-Brown