Unfinished business

Unfinished colouring of fall in all of it's glory

Above all, trust 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 stage 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 them 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

For most projects, we have a goal to complete the tasks, to reach a point where we can state "I'm finished!" It's a great feeling isn't it? There is a sense of accomplishment, a boost of confidence, a rush of pride especially if we know we have done the best we were capable of doing. It's an all round winning feeling to cross that line, to hold up our projects and cry out: "DONE!"

Interestingly, it's the last thing you want to declare for the most important project you and I continue to work on. Ourselves. Who the heck wants to be finished?? We are all projects in progress. We are people at work, under construction, at various points of incompleteness. And you know what? As much as it would be nice every now and then to shout out ..... FINISHED ..... how awfully boring life would be if there wasn't something to examine?

Mike Yaconelli, in his gem of a book, Messy Spirituality states that "the construction site of our souls exposes our flaws, the rough-hewn, not-finished faith clearly visible in our hearts." We need to remember to "trust the slow work of God."

We unfinished beings, in our clumsy stumbling bumbling way continue on our journey with twists and turns, with ups and downs, with detours GALORE. Sometimes, we will hit a peak where everything seems to align at a plateau where a sense of security and understanding allow for the grasping of an enlightened aha moment. This feels soooooooooo good. A lining of the stars......an alignment of the universe kind of feeling.

And then............and then..................... and then what?

We return to the realization there is more to learn, more to absorb..........more hills to climb, more thickets to cut through. As soon as we feel a sense of security at almost the same time, we are thrown into an urge to seek out the unfinished menagerie. We become impatient with our pace of the process of learning........knowledge, comprehension, questioning, connection to previous knowledge, application, internalizing it.........

We are unfinished, forever seeking, always bumbling human beings. We screw things up, say the wrong things, make bad choices...............not all the time..............some of the time. We're really good at bumping our heads on the same window ledge over and over.....like we can't learn to duck. But, we DO learn......and we grow and we examine and we share and we seek out more of the same. Why? Because we are unfinished........and it is our sense of "unfinished-ness" which offers us opportunities to experience the true sense of wonder over and over again. You know? That feeling of WONDER which motivates us to seek out deeper answers, to ask wider questions, and to recognize that we are all in the middle of a suspenseful mystery......one that you cant put down.........and one that you don't want to end.

Be patient and enjoy the unfinished drama. No need to skip the intermediate part. It may be where some of the clues are hidden. Who wants to really close the book and yell out DONE?

Trust in the slow work of God.....

Be patient. take in the show of colour.