As I enter into the spacious rhythm that summer affords me with its longer days and warmer nights I share with you this poem, a poem that fittingly reminds us to trust God and trust the process as we walk with Jesus. As you read the poem I invite you to:

1. Pay attention to the words/phrases that you are drawn to and resistant toward. Once these words and phrases are identified then explore the feelings attached to them – then seek to discover what is beneath these feelings. Feelings, though not fully trustworthy, serve as excellent doorways to self and Divine discovery (especially resistance).

2. Seek to discover what invitations/challenges God may be presenting to you through this poem.

3. Extract and journal about the truths this poem affirms regarding your journey of transformation into Christlikeness?

4. Ponder this question: What, if anything, hinders me from trusting in the slow work of God, giving God the benefit of the doubt and being okay with the incompleteness of where I am in the present moment?

5. What causes me to become impatient during the intermediate stages of growth and those times of instablity?

6. What would it look like, feel like if I began to give myself grace, trusting God and the process? What keeps me from giving myself the same grace that God showers me with?

7. What prayer surfaces from the time you have spent interacting with God through this material. Share your prayer with God - waiting and lstening for God's response.

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 hast.

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