Trust in the Slow Work of God

I was looking at the quote below about the desert, which begins with the words, "In the desert the most urgent thing is -- to wait." I suppose that's one of the (no doubt many) reasons why forty days are ascribed to Jesus' sojourn there. You can't just finish your task, brush your hands off on your jeans, and move on. At any rate, it occurred to me to post one of my favorite prayers in response. On my other blog, I've called it the Grand Canyon prayer. I used it a lot when I was making seminary-related decisons, and one day I completely cracked up as I recalled that its author was a geologist. His idea of "the slow work of God" was a good deal more expansive than mine!

Today, of course, the years I spent on ministry discernment seem but the tiniest drop of time in a bucket compared to the time and intensity demanded by this particular desert. The Colorado River's eons of imperceptible incursion into rock seems an apt parallel.

*********************

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.
Yet it is the law of all progress that 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 mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not 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 you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in 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.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.
Amen.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

And Then, On the Other Hand, and the Other Hand

I spent some time after church this morning talking to a friend there who also lost a 24-year-old son to suicide, on Christmas day seven and one-half years ago. I mentioned the plethora of baby showers, bridal showers, weddings, etc. in our lives this year, and she said that she has two family weddings this fall.

"It's getting easier," she said.

Almost eight years and it's "getting easier."

But then . . .

I just got a call from another friend at church inviting me to come and speak to her women's group next winter (!) on labyrinths. I love to talk about labyrinths. I love to pray on labyrinth walks. I love the giant labyrinth at Chartres and I love the tiny indoor labyrinth in our church.

And I am completely amazed that people still remember that I am a person with certain passions, and that they are still interested in having me speak to them.

Five weeks from approximately right now I will be arriving at the Jesuit retreat center at Guelph, where two years ago the Chartres-sized labyrinth mown into the grass enticed me out under a full moon for an hour's prayer at midnight.

I'm starting to look forward to it.

A new sensation.

Loyola House Labyrinth, Guelph ON

Bodily Grief

I might ask about this in a few other places, too, but it occurs to me that it seems that a number of people read this blog who might have some insight.

I am in almost constant physical pain, and have been since September. It moves around. For the first several months, it was my lower back, which most of the time felt that it was going to snap in two. Off and on, it's the muscles in my thighs; the pain often wakes me up early in the morning. Once I get up, it dissipates quickly. For the last week it has been my neck and shoulders. I thought that perhaps I had pinched a nerve, but as the week came to an end, I had to acknowledge that it was probably Hebrew: three hours a day, three days a week, sitting in uncomfortable chairs and trying to remain alert to unintelligible lectures. I've been fine for the last couple of days -- except, again, in my sleep. I think I must be dreaming about Hebrew and God only knows what else, as I awaken several times in the night needing to become fully conscious in order to figure out a way to roll over without experiencing agony down my neck and across my shoulders.

Maybe I need to pull out the Jon Kabat-Zinn books? A chiropractor is out of the question - I have a friend who is a physical therapist and he has communicated way too much about patients of his who had been seriously injured by chiropractors for me to feel positive about that option. The Lovely Daughter thinks I need to find a Chinese medicine practitioner. Yesterday I picked up a flyer advertising a woman who is offering yoga classes in her home, wondering whether she might do private ones in mine - but the classes she officially offers are for young mothers, designed to fit her schedule and theirs, so it's likely that any offhand comments she makes about her own life would more than offset any physical good she might do me.

As I write this, I realize how likely it is that my feeling of being utterly trapped is contributing to the particular pain I experience. Perhaps Full Catastrophe Living is indeed the place to start. A had always thought of the word "full" in the title as modifying "catastrophe," but maybe it modifies both nouns. Living in the face of full catastrophe? Living fully regardless?

The Long and Winding Road

A couple of days ago, the wonderful women at RevGals hosted a discussion on the challenges inherent in a minister's trying to help a parishoner who is grieving the death of her child. It's a good conversation and I highly recommend it.

I left only one comment; like many readers here, I could have monopolized the site, but I thought that listening would be the better part of valor.

I was struck by a couple of things. First, the genuine desire of the pastors to be of help. I have seen little of my own pastors in the past several months. I can acknowledge some of the responsibility for that; I have not been much in evidence myself. But I have reached out to others for help instead, in large part I think because I see our pastors as fixers rather than listeners ~ and I think I see them that way with good reason. I treasure them as gifted leaders of our church, as friends in ministry with whom I have worked for years on multiple projects, as committed parents and community leaders, as tremendous supporters of my own move toward ministry, but . . . . People have a way of diappearing, and that includes the best of them.

A friend of mine wrote a recent blog entry about the long and lonely months devoted to her battle against breast cancer. Her main point: it takes a l-o-n-g time, and, while friends are present and encouraging and helpful in the early weeks, they don't realize that you still need them many months later. She reserves her most profund gratitude for those who were still there to accompany her to chemo or lend a hand with her daughter or play a game of Scrabble with her long after the rest had disappeared.

I am surely as guilty as the rest. Most especially now. I think often these days of what I would like to do differently in the future, as a neighbor, a friend, a pastor. I think of the other things that impinge upon our time and how we set priorities. I think of how important it is to read between the lines, hear between the words. I think about anticipating the struggles people might be facing, and what I might offer in advance. I think about understanding the reclusiveness that so often marks grief, and how to intrude upon it in a generous way.

Right this moment, for instance. It is a magnificent morning outside. I am studying Hebrew and working in the garden and house -- memorization being one of those things that must be accomplished in small doses over long periods of time. I would love it if someone pulled into the drive this morning and sat on the porch with me for half an hour. I would love it if , rather than the usual "You are so strong, so wise, so articulate, so blah blah blah whatever," someone said to me something more along the lines of "Do you want to talk about the parts you don't talk about?" I would love it if someone called to say, instead of "We hope you'll join us tonight," something like, "I know you probably won't come, but maybe I'll come by here in a few days instead."

I would love it if there were more people who understood that their task is not to provide comfort ~ because there is only occasional and very little comfort to be had ~ but to offer presence. I think that that dichotomy is perhaps at the root of so much absence: that presence without comfort is the best you can sometimes do. You cannot comfort a woman whose cancer threatens the possibility of seeing her daughter graduate from middle school (a joyful event that my friend has just witnessed). You cannot comfort a woman whose child is dead. It's that simple.

What can you do? Anything at all? Well, yes. You can put aside your own fears, the ones along the lines of, If this could happen to her beautiful child, it could happen to mine. You can clamp your mouth shut every time you are tempted to make something akin to a pronouncement, one of the multiple variations on God is with you, and instead ask, or wait to see, what her experience of God is these days. You can put a lid on the shock or dismay or sadness you may feel in response to what comes out of her mouth, and try to create a little island of safety for her in a universe that has revealed treachery and instability. You can honor her experience by hearing and seeing and enduring it with her.

That would be, actually, doing quite a lot.

Speechless

Would I have had the good sense to abandon seminary once and for all if I had known . . .

that in the middle of the first term of Hebrew, the verb used (because it behaves itself in a regular fashion) to explain the baffling concept of voice in Hebrew would be: katal ~ to kill

??????????

To kill.

To be killed.

To kill oneself.

To cause someone to kill.

To be caused to kill.

To cause someone to kill himself.

(A portion of the chart on page 71 of our workbook.)

Oh. My. God.

(And yes. I made it to the end of the class before bursting into tears. Just barely.)

The Desert's Secrets

The Desert's Secrets

(Alessandro Pronzato)

In the desert the most urgent thing is---to wait. The desert does not take kindly to those who tackle it at breakneck speed, subjecting it to their plans and deadlines. It soon takes its revenge and makes them pay dearly for their presumption. Instead, the desert welcomes those who shed their sandals of speed and walk slowly in their bare feet, letting them be caressed and burnt by the sand. If you have no ambition to conquer the desert, if you do not think you are in charge, if you can calmly wait for things to be done, then the desert will not consider you an intruder and will reveal its secrets to you.

Source: Meditations on the Sand

(from today's inwardoutward.org)

(image here)

Ordinary Time

I went to mass late yesterday afternoon because, for a number of reasons, I did not want to worship in my own church on Father's Day. The priest (who happens to be my spiritual director) was wearing green vestments instead of the white of the past several weeks. Hmmm, I thought. Ordinary Time.

What does that mean, ordinary time?

I know what it means, liturgically. But what does it mean?

Here's what I've done on this very ordinary day: I've studied Hebrew vocabulary (to which I intend to return as soon as I finish procrastinating). I finished a verbatim for my spiritual direction program, which took twice the hour I had allotted to it. I took the dog for a walk. I ate some Ramen noodles and did a couple of loads of wash. I am sitting in the living room at the moment, where the Quiet Husband, the Gregarious Son, and the Lovely Daughter are all watching a soccer game on tv.

It all seems pretty ordinary.

Yesterday's readings, of which I am reminded as I skim through some blogs, were not about the ordinary. Jesus stilling the storm seems to have been the gospel reading across the board. Job's creation story made an appearance in Catholic contexts. Nothing ordinary in either of them.

I think it's really interesting that this season of Ordinary Time begins with such extraordinary encounters. What would I say, I wonder, if I were preaching?

Maybe that the ordinary conceals the storms and the mystery. Maybe that if you see a woman in olive cargo pants and a pink t-shirt walking an overly enthusiastic beagle-dachshund, you might want to consider that she is, interiorly, in that boat in the middle of the storm, saying, "How could you be asleep?" Or that she is aligned with Job in bewildered engagement with a God who seems, indeed, to sleep through storms.

Which means that the same might be true of anyone. "Be gentle," said Philo of Alexandria, "for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden."

I guess that's what I would say. That the ordinary conceals the eventful.