The Slow Work of the Spirit

I just ate the tastiest beets I’ve ever had. They were round and a deep ruby-red, with velvety soft, delicate greens (tasty stir-fried with lots of garlic.) The beets themselves were so sweet and rich it felt sinful to eat them. Now, I know my beets. I lived in Russia for a time, after all. So I can say with some authority that these beets were really special.

These beets grew in KUUF’s community garden. Many different sets of hands prepared the soil, tended the beds, weeded and watered and harvested with no ulterior motives or desire to profit personally. Our garden is a true labor of love. We’ve provided over 160 pounds of fresh, organic produce to the Bremerton FoodLine. Call me crazy, but I believe that the beets knew the difference.

Everything we do at KUUF is a labor of love, and most projects, processes, events, and ministries are the work of many hands. I think of all the seeds I’ve seen planted over the past few years, ideas for new initiatives, for parties, for classes and fundraisers and ways of doing church. Not every idea takes root, but the ones that flourish are the ones that are tended by many hands, shepherded along, and allowed to become something different than, perhaps, the original imaginer intended.

For that matter, our very lives are a labor of love. We experience life, accomplish tasks, and then craft meaning, defining and articulating the story arch of our particular journey. Here, too, the lives that are strongest and truest are those that are guided and supported by many hands. We need one another, in good times and bad.

I am curious and excited to find out what might grow in our Religious Education program, now that we have dedi- cated space and a congregational commitment to explore new possibilities. I am eager to find out the ways in which last Spring’s five-year plan will plant new seeds of vitality and sustainability. But the garden has another lesson for us, and that is: PATIENCE. My delicious beets didn’t grow overnight.

People have a much longer lifespan, so our growing time is extended. The lifespan of the congregation is longer still, hopefully reaching into some distant future. The way to promote growth is to get out of the way, to be patient, and to let whatever is growing take shape in its own unique way.

I have a poem above my desk by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It’s called “Patient Trust,” and it reads, in part,

Above all, trust in the slow work of the spirit. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay...

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 your tomorrow.

Who can say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be? Give yourself the benefit of believing that the Spirit is leading you...

The Spirit of Life is in that beet seed, and given fertile ground, love and care, water and light, space to grow and time to rest, it grows into its best self. So it can be for each of us. So should it be. So may it be.

Blessings, Liz