Patient Trust

I just got home this evening from watching a play based on the life story of the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, written by my philosopher-friend-guide Cyril. It was a serious play and had some thought provoking messages. It just happened to be a coincidence that I read a prayer yesterday written by Teilhard, which somehow stayed with me for quite a while after...
It's about being patient and trusting. 
So often I catch myself longing for quick results, hoping to just have everything ready and done without really working to it!! And then there are times I get so excited about plans that I want to, or am in the process of making (still in my mind at this stage) that I can't wait for them to materialize and then I go and end up frustrating myself during the 'planning' period because I already can't wait for the ultimate result! 
I know, it sounds ridiculous! 
But I'm working on "patience". (It's even my dialer-tone!)
So, that's that.

(This kid had to have been the most patient person I've seen in a while!)

The Prayer:


Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We would 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 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.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S,J.