We are in the summer months, with less routine for many of us, though let’s remember that there is more harvest work for farmers, of course. Here is a poem to give us perspective and hope.     Louise Corke

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
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, Jesuit priest, scientist, philosopher and teacher