I’m going to take the next couple of weeks off, so you won’t be hearing from me again until after the holidays.

I used to be anxious about taking time off at the end of the year.

• Will other people be grinding away while I’m baking?
• What will I be missing out on?
• I’m going to miss my chance to get ahead!

Now I know, that there’s nothing more important than some time off; baking cookies, sitting by the fire, and hanging out with family and friends (in a COVID-safe way, of course).

That time away brings me back so much more refreshed and energized – by the second week of Jan I’ll be doing laps around my using the holidays to get ahead past self.

Slow work is good work

One of the underlying principles that has led to this change in me is understanding that change, and progress, take time.

I hate this truth, but I can’t escape it.

To try to reorient my brain in this direction I’ve been regularly reading this prayer created by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. early in the last century.

I’m leaving it here as a blessing to you, and your business, for this holiday season.

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
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own goodwill)
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, SJ excerpted from Hearts on Fire

See you next year!