I stare at the little green shoots on our small and struggling tree and will them to grow faster.
Come on, I think. The deer can still reach you there. You have to get taller, bigger, wider, anything.
But, of course, that’s not how trees work. That’s not how plants grow. And that’s not how life is nourished. Willing a thing to grow faster does not make it happen.
In fact, if I were a smarter gardener, I’d turn my attention to the tree’s roots rather than its shoots, to the unseen work of life rather than the flashy signs of something new. I’d refresh the soil, dig out encroaching weeds, and edge out the persistent grass. I might even fence off the toiling tree and push pack the perimeter of the nosy, hungry deer.
Instead, I stare at the tree, hoping against all reason that overnight the trunk will expand, the limbs will soar, and the bark will grow so thick and gnarled as to chase off any wondering, wandering pest trying to tear it down before its time. This is foolishness.
As I stare at the thin, earnest, and all-too-exposed greenery, I reflect on my wish. I could box off my tree, shroud it in layers of protective and proverbial bubble wrap, and chase away as many threats as is humanly—and I mean that literally—possible. But acts of God—and I mean that legally—still occur: a wayward lightning strike, a sudden blast of wind, an unavoidable blight that targets only trees like mine. I can’t protect that little plant from everything.
And so, I continue to stare at it, wondering, willing, worrying.
I think of the prayer of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, “Patient Trust.” I think of how we are called to “trust in the slow work of God,” and how “we are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay” and skip those pesky intermediate steps rife with unknown peril. But God’s Spirit takes time to grow in us, to form us, to bring us to fruition, and so we must ever “accept the anxiety of feeling…in suspense and incomplete.”
The tree must grow in its own time, no matter how strongly I may wish otherwise. And I can’t, despite my best efforts, completely eliminate the risk, peril, and dangers that such growth entails. Those dangling shoots of budding foliage will always be tasty treats to passing deer, and even if I fence off the tree from all would-be invaders, there’s still the rain and the wind and the frost and the lightning and the blight.
All I can do is wait in patient trust and marvel at the tree’s shoots as they are in this moment and tend to the roots and the soil and know that come risk or reward, God’s Spirit is at work all the same.
And so too it is for us.