Slow and Steady—Thorny Problems Call for a Slower Pace
I wrote the following essay for the Virginia Seminary Journal at the request of its editor for an issue themed “Under Construction.”
“Don’t try to make a difference,” the Jesuit monk told us. “Everyone is always trying to make a difference and it just wears them out and doesn’t help,” he added.
It was, for me, a challenging statement. My wife, Victoria, and I were hiking the entire Appalachian Trail in a single hike. We found ourselves on this spring evening at the Jesuit-run hostel in Hot Springs, North Carolina. The offer was that hikers could stay for free in exchange for doing some work on the grounds. The task before us was a briar patch that would have given Br’er Rabbit a kingdom unto himself. He had handed us gloves and loppers and asked that we spend an hour or so working on cutting and stacking to burn the
interlacing arches of photosynthesis-fueled razor wire.
The monk saw that gleam in my eye and recognized the particular version of the sin of pride at once. He knew in that glance what I felt deep in my bones—I would be the one to work so hard that I could make a noticeable dent in the mountain of thorny vines. “It couldn’t be more than a half-acre or so, an acre at the most,” I thought, “I can punch a noticeable hole in that.”
“Some work requires patience,” he told us. “There is no quick solution. Working steadily without looking for immediate change can accomplish so much more. Just keep at it,” he said, then added, “Just cut for a while, stack the dead branches in the burn pile and walk away. It’s not your job to finish it.”
This was a lesson we needed to hear. We had picked a lot bigger goal than knocking back a massive patch of weeds. Victoria and I were 270 miles into a 2,150-mile long hike along the backbone of the East Coast.
The Jesuit then launched into a story he knew I needed to hear. He said, “During World War II, a pilot with the Flying Tigers had engine problems and parachuted out just ahead of his P-40 splashing down hard in a forgotten stretch of a Burmese river.
“The Army Air Force eventually got a crew up the river to try to rest the fighter from its muddy grave, but using the little crane and what other equipment they could fit on the boat, the men could not begin to budge the plane. As they worked, the airmen were watched by the people of a nearby village. As the group was packing to leave, the village headman spoke through an interpreter asking if the village raised the machine, would the Americans buy it back from them. The translator relayed that a deal would definitely be struck. The Flying Tigers were so in need of planes, the ground crew was patching one together with spare parts to get another fighter flying.”
The Jesuit paused for effect, he was a natural preacher and a congregation of two was just fine with him. As the sun lowered somewhere beyond the mountains and the shadows deepened in the briar patch, he forged ahead, “The Americans and the mechanical muscle gone, the plan was simple. The people of the village, were directed by their chief that every time they swam in the river, those who could do so should dive down to the plane and work a short length of bamboo up into the fuselage. Every day, a little more bamboo was worked into the cockpit. Once that area was packed with bamboo, they used vines to get bamboo under any part exposed above the mud. Slowly the plane lifted and more bamboo was added. In time, the P-40 was off the bottom and word was sent downriver that the Americans could fetch their fighter.”
He did not force the point home. The lesson was ended. He simply repeated, “Don’t try to make a difference. Just cut for a while. Put the vines in the burn pile and walk away.”
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That evening’s work in Hot Springs became important to our thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. We could never plan out the hike all the way to Katahdin in the Maine wilderness. We could only look to what came next. There was no real way to hike all the way from Georgia to Maine, at least not at the practical day-by-day level. We could merely hike the next miles in front of us, as far as we could on any given day.
For the tortoise to beat the hare, he could inch along toward the finish line. He just had to stay steady. For us to hike the whole Appalachian Trail in a single hike, we only needed to go farther up the Trail each day. Some days it might be barely more than 10 miles. Some others we would easily pass 20 miles. Occasionally we had to stop completely to wash clothes, buy food and regroup. But what mattered most was to stay at it, concerning ourselves with the part of the journey beneath our feet and all around us, rather than with the goal of climbing Katahdin and completing the trek. Yes, that end goal of hiking the whole Trail mattered. It kept us focused, gave us a reason to take the five million or so steps that would carry us along the spine of the Appalachian Mountain chain. But the day by day effort was what mattered most.
When my wife and our then nine-year-old daughter, Griffin, and I drove away from Virginia Theological Seminary following graduation in May of 2000, we had a clear goal before us, we would plant a new Episcopal church in Kingsland, Georgia. The vision simply put was twofold: 1) We wanted to start a church that was so vital to its community that if it folded ten years later, people who never attended the church would miss it, and 2) We wanted to do something so big for God that if God wasn’t part of it, we would fall flat on our faces and look like idiots. That was the vision. One part of which could only be judged with the hindsight of a decade. Neither could be accomplished quickly.
Others have remarked of the growth of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland, saying that the move from three of us to a thriving parish was a quick one. A successful preschool, an active Scout program and more seemed to sprout up on their own. Yet, it only happened fast in the way that someone else’s pregnancy seems quick, or someone else’s son is noticeably taller every time you see him. In the work of church planting, as with all church work, there are some times when one can see a real difference, but mostly being the church involves steady work with little sign week by week that change is occurring. Even relatively quick gains in attendance come one person, one couple or family at a time, with each taking months or years to go from casually attending newcomers to committed members who are taking their own part in the church’s reaching out in love to its community.
But on leaving in our tenth year, we could see times when if God had not been part of it, we would have fallen flat on our faces. The day we opened the preschool with a good solid business plan, and so little financial cushion that it was foolhardy, is but one example. But as the Gospel involves risk, there was no path to success that did not significantly risk failure. Within six years, the church had become such an integral part of the community—through the preschool, the Scout program, the Narcotics Anonymous and more—that many people who did not attend King of Peace had come to rely on the church.
This was not the work of just me and my wife and daughter. No, a church cannot be grown from the pulpit alone or from the work of even a handful of individuals. It was the steady work of many people that built a church upon which the community could depend.
Now I work as Canon to the Ordinary, I find myself routinely facing more work than I can dent. Each day, I do what I can, and I go home having made no noticeable change in assisting our congregations to be more vital. Yet, as I look up after a year, I do see a few signs of hope, glimmers of light that reveal the work this new team I am on is not working in vain. It will take many more years of steady work to know if we have built on the rock as we intend. And in the meantime, there will be hundreds of days of making no difference at all.
I have taught this principle to every person I introduce to spiritual disciplines. Praying the daily offices and reading through the scripture on that pattern will make no discernable difference on any one of the hundreds of days in a year. A spiritual path requires a slow and steady pace even more than a physical trail. The changes the Holy Spirit nudges in our hearts and minds are more like those made by water running over rock. The Holy Trinity is intent on spending eternity with you and from that perspective, there is no rush. Don’t look for an individual sermon or Eucharist to change your life, just keep returning to the altar. The daily and weekly rhythms of worship and service are not for naught, even if we see no change after daily prayer and reading, for a week, a month, or a year.
Victoria has gotten us exercising again. My wife and I have been at it for a little more than a month. We have cut back on the food we eat—eating less, but better. We are exercising at least six days a week. And yet, weeks into the process, I see no real change. The pounds have not melted away. I am not ready to kick sand in the face of the bully at the beach. The goal is to feel better next year than we do this year. After letting ourselves fall out of shape over a period of years, we will need time to get fit.
So as I look to the fitness of my body and the health of the Diocese and my own spiritual journey, I think back to night falling on a mountain of briars seemingly untouched by our efforts and to a fighter jet slowly being filled with short, fat sections of bamboo. The task for today is not to make a difference in my health, or to change the Diocese of Georgia for the better. Before the day is out, I should expect no spiritual epiphany. Today, I just need to be faithful to the portion of the path beneath my feet and the sights and sounds of the journey.
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