BY JEAN P. KELLY

DURING THE LAST FEW growing seasons, I’ve created garden makers not only noting the variety of expected produce—garlic, potato, beans, onions, but also their expected maturity date. My handwriting in Sharpie reminds me that gardening requires a discipline that is not always easy for me: waiting. Each little note, transcribed from a seed packet, assures me that no matter how much I water, fertilize, worry about pests, guard against marauding deer, and otherwise fuss and fret, I cannot rush the harvest.

Patience may be a virtue, but one thing I find especially hard to cultivate in these times of smart phone-dependent instant gratification and a collective restlessness with communication that is not immediate and impulse buys not delivered the same day. And even when waiting is unavoidable, say in a grocery store line or in traffic, my phone proffers remedies that feel like productivity: reading emails, web searching, or “connecting” with others by scrolling social media.

Early church leaders taught that “in every good work, it is not we who begin… but He (God) first inspires us with faith and love of Him.” In other words, every good work, action, and outcome is infused with Divine grace long before mere humans become involved.

Liminal time, however, is hard baked into many earthly experiences, a reminder that we rush at our own peril. For example, when indulging a desire to cultivate —caring for fellow humans or flora and fauna—we must sign a contract with an immutable timeline. Creating life of any kind, growing inside a human body or coaxed from the earth, emerges slowly, according to a cosmic clock and without regard for even the most intense impatience. Anyone who has taught or mentored anyone, whether a child or an employee, knows that attempts to hurry maturity imperil the end results: both meaningful growth and the satisfaction of witnessing it firsthand. We all know the adage “good things come to those who wait,” but we believe that wisdom only after enduring the pain of impatience.

Cultivating a relationship with the Great Creator requires waiting as well. In Psalm 25 David says “For you are God my savior. For you I wait all the day long.” Later, in Psalm 27, we are told to wait not once but twice: “Wait for the Lord; Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord.” The people of Judah are rebuked in Isaiah 30 for substituting self-reliance for trust in God’s protection, told to act less and rest more. “By waiting and by calm you shall be saved. In quiet and in trust your strength lies.” Christ likewise offered several parables demonstrating how the intentional path toward spiritual fulfillment requires preparation, dutiful action, and, yes, waiting: for the master of a house to return, for the bridegroom to arrive, and so on. In other words, not even desperate prayers can hurry the process of spiritual growth. Waiting–with humility, openness, and trust that God is near–prepares us to recognize and accept Divine love, not just in the afterlife, but in the here and now

As anecdote, I now seek out opportunities to wait, thereby increasing my capacity for patience. Each time I pause, say nothing, or do nothing, I learn that waiting often achieves better outcomes. That is why, for twenty minutes twice a day every day, I now simply wait for God, without words, without thoughts, without any goal except showing up for our relationship. Sometimes I am distracted, even impatient, but I remain dedicated to the discipline of Centering Prayer because I trust that the fruits of contemplation will not be harvested after one session, one week or even one year. My goal, as taught by Fr. Thomas Keating, is “Just to be with God in awe and wonder and rapt attention. ….[Be] without reflection, expectation, desire for any feeling, since the greatest experience of God is no experience; God as he is in himself, is always the beyond. …Wait upon God, longing for his presence, patient with our weakness, and dependent on what God thinks is best for us in this period of our prayer experience.”

In other words, I now trust God to control what and when is best for me and those I love. Trust, spiritual tradition teaches, is a necessary condition of all the theological virtues, but most especially faith and hope. For example, in Psalm 25 before David promises to wait, he acknowledges his dependence on God, and accepts that human efforts alone will never assure the outcome he desires: union with God. “My God in you I trust,” he prays.

Repeated reading of Scriptural admonitions to wait—my Centering Prayer app ends each session with Isaiah—helped improve my patience and acceptance, but I was frustrated by what I perceived to be a too-slow pace of spiritual growth. Until, that is, I discovered the “why” of waiting in a lesser-known (to most Catholics) theological concept known as prevenient grace. First proposed by Austine of Hippo in the early 400s, then codified as canon by the Second Council of Orange in 529, early church leaders taught that “in every good work, it is not we who begin… but He (God) first inspires us with faith and love of Him.” In other words, every good work, action, and outcome is infused with Divine grace long before mere humans become involved. This grace is “preceded by no merits,” so available to us all, both when we act and when we do not.

Thanks to prevenient grace, I can wait, trusting that God begins praying in me long before I sit down to meditate. Now when I settle in a chair twice per day, I think of tuning into a television program “already in progress.” My only responsibility is to be still and cooperate with God. Even when distracted, impatient, and in a hurry, my showing up and waiting are never in vain.

Just as I trust seeds and bulbs buried deep in the dirt are cultivated by forces of water, nutrients, and energy I cannot see, I know the Great Creator is perpetually cultivating me, not the other way around.