Quiet Day Thoughts

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 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, SJ

Five Minute Friday -- Quiet

The house is quiet. The tea kettle is done with its whistling. The dogs are finished with breakfast. I've talked with my husband, and dear daughter is still asleep.
The workers in the neighborhood have left for the day, so my street is still and empty of commuters.
The only sounds in the house are the tapping of the dogs nails on the floor and hum of the computer. 
This is my time. The quiet of the house after the rush of the morning. The "have-to's" are done and I can sit and quietly let my mind wander where it will.
Quiet is a good thing at times like this. But at other times quiet has been terrifying. It's amazing how much fear can be invoked by silence, or worse yet, whispers. 
But for now I put those thoughts and memories aside.
I sip my Irish Breakfast tea with demerara sugar and milk. I look out my window at the bright orange sugar maple in my neighbor's yard. I scan the blue sky. I see the squirrels chase each other, and all is quiet . . . and as it should be.

linking up with Five Minute Friday