This Is the One Prayer Your Heart Needs Right Now
On pause, patient trust, and a prayer of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Trust in the slow work of God.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin —
In the spirit of rêverie, I’ve been reading through old writings. Earlier this week, I came across an essay I’d written for
Magazine, some two years ago.As I write this, summer is turning its deep bend into August, that hazy month which is hot and humid but also hints at the repose of fall to come. Soon, leaves will leave trees and the days will grow shorter, darker, and colder. The earth will tilt on its axis and we will turn away from the heat of that glorious sun. And if we pay attention, really pay attention, we will notice in our own spirits a similar kind of seasonality. Along with the natural world, we, too, will turn inward. Our bodies will obey the shift in seasons, nature’s clock that ticks and tells time. We will fall subject to schedules that we cannot outwit or control. We will withdraw through the long winter, that sleepy season where the world grows sleepy and silent and still. —from “Being Obedient to Time”
These words feel real and raw, touching on the tender part of my heart that is tired of time and weary from wandering and wading through this current season—weary from waiting.
I sense this might be true for you, too. We are always in tension with time, are we not? Always waiting on something or someone. Always wanting. Always waning from waiting and wanting.
Just this week, I received a notification that someone gifted me $20 on Venmo. They’d simply searched my name and slipped the money into my account, surprising me with the kindness of a stranger, like days gone by. I’d only had a few email encounters with this person, never met her in person, don’t even know what her voice sounds like. Like sweetness, I’m sure.
Delight in a sweet treat (maybe an iced latte). Don’t thank me…My God wink came from…
There I was, right in the middle of the grocery store with my sons, logging into my bank account and checking to make sure that there would be enough money to cover the cost of picking up a few items. When I saw this notification come through, I smiled. Then I chuckled. Then I held back tears. She didn’t know the depth of her kindness; doesn’t know the depth of the struggle of this season, right now.
Because, yes, I, quite literally, do know what it’s like to count pennies to pay for groceries while waiting for paychecks. And, yes, I know what it feels like to wait for work, to hold my breath for more hours, more dollars. Waiting to know what steps come next. What paths and possibilities will unravel. What roads to take. Which way to walk. Waiting for answers, waiting for clarity, waiting for a car, waiting for a house to call home. Just waiting.
How do we live through the lingering longings? How do we live through the lack, the long list of needs and wants and even the would-be-nice-to-haves.
I’m waiting with you. I don’t know what you’re waiting for or who you’re waiting on, but my guess is that you’re waiting. Like me. Like her. Like them.
Perhaps the pause in your painting, the waiting in your writing, or the detour in your dancing, is an invitation to cultivate questions and curiosities, all of which are for you, all of which will deeply form not merely your art but your very being.
There is no rule that you must rush, there is no race of accomplishment to run. There is only coming to trust in the God who holds the temporality of our lives in his hands. There is coming to surrender to the seasonal nature of our world, our lives, our art. There is only finding ourselves in suspension, a waiting that looks less like waning and more like wondering. A pause that looks less like postponing and more like pondering the nature of our world and work—the nature of the work being done within us. —from “Being Obedient to Time”
As I read through my essay “Being Obedient to Time,” I relived a memory, a moment, shared between my friend K.J. Ramsey (
) and I.Talking face-to-face on the phone, K.J. tells me about a prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that’d been strengthening her soul. Then, with her tender voice, she read the poem to me:
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
Beloved, maybe you need these words just as much as I do—right here, right now. Take this poem, this prayer. Put the words in your pocket and carry them with you in the days and weeks to come.
In all your waiting—in all your wanting to rush through the pause you very well currently find yourself in. Instead, may you come to cultivate patient trust as you trust in the slow work of God.
All,
Rachel
Music to meditate.
Don’t forget to listen to my Nostalgic Summer ‘24 playlist. Let me know if you have any trouble with the link, and please do tell me what you think of it : )
Curiosity to contemplate.
Read my essay “Being Obedient to Time,” and comment with all thoughts and ponderings.
Prompt to ponder.
What are you waiting for? Who are you waiting on? What pauses are you currently living and longing through? Feel free to share here—would love to hear your heart.
Recent features.
Listen to my recent interview on the Peace Talks podcast by The Center for Formation, Justice and Peace. This conversation gracefully moves from one moment to the next and reveals the many layers of poetry—as activism, as a holding space for grief, as a way to name. This beautiful interview will stir you to something more.
Then (this is fun), listen to the recap episode where Bishop Todd Hunter and Katie Haseltine discuss the Peace Talks interview with Rachel Marie Kang.
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I was recently introduced to you after listening to you on Peace Talks. I immediately ordered “The Matter of Little Losses” and have just started digging into it. I love the way you shape words and how you put language to things k struggle to articulate. Thank you for sharing this prayer. It is timely in my life.
Rachel, this finds me in a raw and vulnerable place this morning. Truth be known, this sensitive space has held me the last few weeks or longer. However Rebecca and I have been on vacation that started on 6/25 with seeing old friends, going to an art retreat, then ending our trip with old friends. We arrived back home last night.
I believe the postponement of dealing with issues at the church I work at and truly entering vacation for rest and peace and friendship has actually intensified my emotions. At least it feels like it this morning. We are entering a season of transition! Both at the church where I'm an associate pastor, but also personally it feels. The unknown is a lot, and the known, very little. While the trust in the work of God is real and present...the impatience in the unknowing is also very real and present.
Thanks for the article today and the reference to the older essay, and specifically the prayer. It definitely calms this exhausted and anxious soul.