stages of instability.

I’m feeling impatient. I am reminded again and again of why I am here, of how well this community fits with my questions and interests, but it often feels just out of my reach. There are wonderful things going on all around me but I don’t always have the Spanish skill or the background knowledge to understand or participate in what is happening.

I go to meetings and events excited to ask questions, to listen and learn, to get to know the people in my community. Usually, though, after a few slow, concentrated conversations, my energy begins to fade. Even when conversations go well, my vocabulary level doesn’t allow for particularly engaging discussions. Really, this is what I expected, but when talking with a woman about how the local church can provide better support around the issue of family violence in the neighborhood, or listening to parents discuss their efforts to organize a advocacy group for parents of children with disabilities, or talking to a group of teenagers about the effects of pesticides in their communities, I want to wrestle with the ideas, not with the words themselves.

Thank goodness for the patience of others. Today, as I walked home from work after a day of collecting dirt from the backyard that we will make into clay for the kids, I thought about a sermon I heard in high school. At the time, I wasn’t particularly blown away, but for some reason it has stuck with me through the years. The point was that throughout the Gospel, people approached Jesus in many different ways, but all with similar results. Some came looking. Some were sought after. Some were making a desperate final attempt at finding some peace. And some were carried. Sometimes when we are incapable and unprepared, the people around us are the ones that do the important work. Now, as I struggle to have patience with myself, I am feeling carried by the patience of the people around me: the effort of my host parents as they take the time to really talk to me, the willingness of my supervisor to meet with me after every meeting to go over everything at a slower pace, an e-mail from home that says exactly the right things.

In my human moments, the moments where I forget about grace and patience and just feel frustrated, I often make my way back to a prayer I was given a couple of years ago during another period of impatience.

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 you tomorrow.

Only God could say that 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.

Teilhard de Chardin

All my love.