Trust in the Slow Work of God: A Gentle Beginning to the New Year

So, before we burst into this new year armed with our color coded goal charts and shouldering the weight of a personal-reno project, let’s be gentle with ourselves. 

Let’s sit down on the seam of the year and remember who and whose we are. 

As we begin, I’m going to read us a quote from Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit and author from the last century.

Quiet music:

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, S.J. (1881-1955)

What resonates most with you in this quote?

This is what members of the Presence Project facebook group answered when I posted it this week: 

Allanna Dillon said she loved the phrase:

“Trust in the slow work of God”. I cause myself great emotional pain when I want to be ‘fixed’ now. 

Jan Bennett:

“accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.” It is wonderful to know that “his hand is leading me” and I can ask him to help me believe it in the midst of learning to “trust in the slow work of God”. God is not shaming me, but encouraging me!

Stacy Sisk said the line,

“Trust in the slow work of God.”

Stops me in my tracks because I’m in such a hurry to be “done” for some reason. With tasks, with personal growth.

As if the journey isn’t valuable.

But maybe the journey where he and I walk together is the point of it all.

Can’t we all identify?

These three concepts jump out at me:

1. We’re reminded the Christian life is a journey. We can accept ourselves in our stage of becoming.
2. We’re reminded that we are not our own creator, and
3. We can ask God for His dream, his vision for us this year.

When I think of Chardin’s phrase, in suspense and incomplete, I think of Michaelangelo’s prisoners or slaves in Florence’s museum, the Accademia. They greet us as we walk in the door. The David stands alone in an almost chapel-like atrium drawing all the attention, but it’s the prisoners, four figures, half-finished who captivate me. There’s a startling beauty in the half done, a startling beauty in the becoming. I want to run my hand over the unfinished, pocked marble. Atlas’ head is thrown back, his body emerging, smooth arms and legs, smooth torso, but his head is thrown back, his face still encased in marble, concealed. Was Michaelangelo ever going to come back to finish them? No one knows.

They’re in various stages of being finished and every time I see them, I have a feeling of kinship. 

I get discouraged with my own becoming, the half-finished and pock-marked heart, the crusty and the caustic, the half-healed wounds which when touched, still jump up and surprise me with their ferocious yelp. I’m still emerging. It’s messy and at times, thoroughly disheartening. I either double-down trying to transform myself or isolate with depression.

But, can I accept myself in this stage of becoming? Can we begin the year by appropriating the grace God whispers as he holds our chin in His two hands, “you can be confident of this. I am the one who began a good work in you and I WILL carry it to completion.”

We’re all incomplete. But, can we, as Chardin says, accept the anxiety of being in suspense and incomplete? Can we trust that the Creator hasn’t walked away, he is fully engaged in the creation process. When, this summer, I took in the wonder of Yellowstone or even when I just open up a National Geographic, I can see that He is an artist who enjoys creating and we know from scripture that he doesn’t just love creating, He, in fact loves the creation itself.

I wonder if you can take a moment to visualize yourself as a piece of art being sculpted by a Creator who enjoys the extravagant act of creation?

We have same Creator who spoke and out came stars. 

The same Creator who painted frogs purple and striped zebras, who exquisitely designed over 17,500 species of butterflies.

The same Creator who made sunflowers to turn towards the sun and fish to glow in the deep. The same creator who made the softness of rabbit fur and the wild peeks of the Grand Tetons. Who designed crashing Waterfalls and carpets of multi-colored primroses in the dark forests of Switzerland, art only seen occassionally by a hiker passing by.

He had you in mind from the creation of the world and as He walks around you, his unfinished marble, he says, “We’re in this together.” Your becoming was paid for by a cross. It was costly and friend, He’s not walking away leaving you half-finished. He’s a Creator who’s fully invested.

So, can we give the Lord the benefit of believing He knows what He’s doing? That He enjoys the creation process? Can we give Him the benefit of believing that the awkwardness that we feel as we are becoming has nothing to do with how He feels about us as He creates? Our Creator loves being with us in the becoming.

Second, can we accept ourselves in suspense and incomplete?

“The act of self-acceptance is the root of all things. I must agree to be the person who I am. Agree to the qualifications which I have. Agree to live within my limits…The clarity and the courageousness of this acceptance is the foundation of all existence,” Fr. Romano Guardini.

For those of you who are brain science nerds, self-acceptance helps us process emotions, calms down the alarm-raising fight/flight amygdala. It increases serotonin, the calming and well-being hormone. Instead of a clenched fist of shame, it creates space for grace. 

What is Self-acceptance?

Self-Acceptance is just finding ourselves on a map and looking up and saying, “Yup, that’s where I am…and no, I’m not sure where to go from here” and then just sitting down in grace.

It is the end to the superwoman and the beginning to mercy. It is the end of powering through and the beginning of the door swung wide to present-moment joy.

Acceptance is evidence of love rooted deep, arms receiving.  It’s that little yellow flower in Hinds Feet on High Places looking up to the Giver, receiving the drops that come: Acceptance with Joy.

It is joining God by saying, “It is good” as we gaze at His created beings, ourselves included.

Strangely enough, acceptance is the surest way to forgetting ourselves. As we accept where we are on our journey, it opens us up to non-judgmental love. We can’t accept others until we stare our unrealistic benchmarks in the eye and rest in the honesty of imperfection. 

Acceptance has the courage to say: I love you as you are right now and we’ve got all the time in the world.

Finally, self-acceptance is the first step to holy detachment or benevolent detachment as St. Ignatius talked about. It puts room between me and my suffocating standards or even the desires I whisper to my closest friends. I can enjoy my desires with the Lord like watching koi in a pond, seeing their scales shimmer as they come to the surface. I can allow them to grow and change without feeling the panic to grasp them, smother them with my fear or a demanding ego. 

Acceptance looks like a cross, arms outstretched, open.

And once again, acceptance begins with remembering our Creator is hard at work.

We can trust in the slow work of God.

So on the edge of this new year, let’s remember that we have never been and certainly never are our own makeover project. We are not the prime mover, the initiator, or the victorious story-finisher.  

We can gaze at He who is tenderly gazing at us and ask Him, “Jesus, what did you have in mind when you created me? Will You give me a glimpse?  This year, how can I participate in your dream for me?”

And finally, we place a spotlight on the larger objective, as Stacey Sisk said:

Maybe our walking together is the goal. 

So maybe, dear ones, like two old people, walking through the park, ambling forward, holding hands, wearing matching coats, matching hats, becoming like Jesus arises step by step. 

I’m going to read our quote one more time and this time slowly:

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, S.J. (1881-1955)