Good and growing things take time. We planted two trees in our yard a few years ago, one was several years old and taller than me when we put it in the ground, the other was no bigger than a pencil. Today they are both taller than me, but I’ve come to appreciate the pencil-turned-tree a little more. I had the joy of watching it grow from nearly nothing into a full tree. Next year it may even produce its first apples. I think this tree impresses me because we waited patiently for it to grow, we nurtured it, we regularly pointed it out to others with pride, and we will soon get to eat from it. It feels like a little miracle in our back yard.
Some Things are slow, but that’s the way of Some Things. Slowness and time are often the only way that we can get what money can’t often buy. I can buy a fully grown tree, or a prepared pie, or a nice wooden canoe. But to watch a tree grow over years, or learn to bake pastry from scratch, or build a wooden canoe with grandpa is something that only time can give you.
Jean Vanier said that, “An individual’s growth towards love and wisdom is slow. A community’s growth is even slower. Members of a community need to be great friends of time. They have to learn that many things will resolve themselves if they are given enough time. It can be a great mistake to want, in the name of clarity and truth, to push things too quickly to a resolution.”
You take time to grow. Humans rarely grow in leaps and bounds, we grow slowly and require attentive care. We need the love of others, we need to be known, we need health and we need attentiveness to our inner life – but all of this takes time. We cannot force a person to grow or to change quickly. It’s simply not how we work. Similarly, our neighbourhoods take time and the nurturing care that only real people, over the long term, can bring. A complaint alone will not fix your neighbourhood because communities, like people, require the kind of care that only comes with time. Neighbourhoods are much more like an orchard than a fast-food drive-through. If we see them through a fast lens, we will be disappointed, and many are. We want to find trusted friendships in our community, but when we don’t come by them easily, we are prone to think our neighbourhood is uncaring and look for another place to live. This is why Jean Vanier says we need to become ‘friends of time.’ Enjoying our neighbourhoods requires a long-view of our place and the people who live nearby. It takes time to nurture good things.
The good news is this: those who befriend time and recognize the slow growth that people and neighbourhoods require, they are the people who will reap the reward when something does grow. Waiting and patience eventually give way to celebration and all kinds of goodness.
May we invest in others what only time can grow, and may we enjoy the gifts that only time can give.
