Note: Reflection offered by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Strolling without a destination, the day’s invitation was to linger without reason or a purpose, other than gratitude. Sitting idle upon the garden wall was a pair of worn leather boots without companion. Resting, abandoned, forgiving, trusting, lonely, lost or forgotten?
Perhaps, his feet were tired and swollen and he breathed a sigh of relief as he unfurled the tight laces to stretch his toes, released from the weariness that accompanies a day of labor, immersed in the feel of cool greening grass.
Did he sit and take in the “sky mogily blue” above and wonder, whatever had his grandfather meant, who he had never even met, when he said those confounding words? Or did he instead rise up in ecstatic joy and for one fleeting moment; free from the cares of this world, splash and stomp with childlike glee in the cold fountain mist? Or did he sit dreamily to watch his feet dancing without moving at all?
What would bring your aching feet comfort or healing from life's injuries? When our actions cause suffering, we suffer too. Can we forgive ourselves and in doing so free others? A reversal of thought from the realities of this world returns us to our true nature.
What story do these shoes have to tell about the life of this person who has worn and molded them to the contours of their soul?
What comes to mind for you? Perhaps the truism to never judge another person until you have walked a mile in their shoes? Regardless of how leathered and old, is it still a helpful adage to live by?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French philosopher, Jesuit priest, paleontologist, and geologist. His poem (below) speaks to the sometimes excruciating experience of waiting on God.
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.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that 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.
Do not 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 you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in 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.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser. Amen. ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Liz Sorensen Wessel
Photo by ~liz
Journal of Sacred Work 
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