Patience is not one of my greatest virtues. Although I actually feel, hopefully not mistakenly, that I’m am pretty patient with other people, I’m just not very patient with myself. When I have stuff I have to do, I have a hard time putting up with things that get in the way. This is something that I’ve always struggled with, but is now even more challenging to me as I live, work, and do my ministry in new and very different environment.
Florah, my coworker, and I have been praying a novena to St. Anne, the mother of our Blessed Mother and grandmother of Jesus, or as one of the novena prayers refers to her, mother of the Mother of God, which I really like. St. Anne’s feast day is July 26th, so we started the novena last week in order to finish the novena in time for the feast day. Praying the novena together was entirely due to Forah’s initiative, but I’m so happy that she invited me to pray along with her. On the days when we are working together, we pray the novena together. On days when we are not together, Florah texts or calls me to make sure I have remembered to pray :0)
As you pray the novena each day, you are asked to state your intention/petition. The first day, when Florah asked me to pray the novena while we were in the office together, we began reading the novena prayer for the day, which I had not read beforehand. When we got to the part which says to state your intention, I had to come up with something on the spot. What I believe providentially popped into my head was to pray for patience, which I did. OK, it’s not like I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that I need to be more patient, but this was the perfect time to entrust my petition to the powerful intercession of St. Anne. This has been the primary daily intention of my novena ever since. Yesterday was Day 5 and the novena prayer for the day appropriately starts out with “Great Saint Anne, how far I am from resembling you. I so easily give way to impatience and discouragement”. Yes, I thought while reading it, that is me.
I love my ministry work on the H.O.P.E. project. I feel blessed to be able to play a small part in helping orphans, who otherwise would not have the means, pursue an education. I feel so strongly in education as means of empowerment. Education is what I believe is key to providing the children we work with an opportunity to raise above their current situations and have happy and fulfilling lives.
I especially love working with children to help them learn how to think for themselves and learn how to solve problems. When I am tutoring students, I try to emphasize to them to not so much rely on memorization, but rather understand concepts. I’ve always had a terrible memory. I’ve always wished that I could better remember things. I get so frustrated when I know that I have read or studied something in the past about a particular subject, but just can’t ever seem to recall the specifics when I need the information. On the positive side, my poor memory has forced to be focus on understanding concepts, not just memorize things. Understanding concepts is certainly more important than brute memorization, but I still wish I had a better memory. If only I could have both!
As I begin my work on the H.O.P.E project, I’ve come up with all these grand plans on how I would like to expand and improve the project going forward. Still being in US corporate work mode, I’m developing a strategic plan with goals and objectives, as well as a number of deliverables in support of these goals and as a means of socializing my ideas with the project’s stakeholders and the broader community. My frustration and lack of patience revolves around the fact that compared to what I’m used to, it is just so difficult to get things done here. The simplest things that I would previously take for granted are a big deal here. Things that I used to be able to do pretty quickly, take a very long time to complete. Things that I used to be able to schedule and organize, seem never to work the way I plan here.
Probably not surprisingly given my background, the direction I’m trying to move the project is to utilize technology as a key enabler. I want to leverage technology to enhance collaboration, improve efficiency, and better publicize the project in order to attract more donors, funding and partners. I would also like to use technology to improve the learning experience of our students. Although right now I’m not sure how to pull it off (but keep reminding myself to leave things in God’s hands and that nothing is impossible for him), my hope is to utilize technologies like computer-based training to help students better learn and prepare for standardized exams, which are so important in Kenya. Unfortunately, these plans, which are maybe ambitious to begin with, are made even more difficult due to the infrastructure, security, and corruption issues.
I still tend to look at things in terms of productivity – what did I accomplish today, this week, the past month. I have all these plans, why can’t I make more progress? Why can’t I seem to get much done? I know it’s not only impossible, but also the completely wrong mindset to work strictly in that type of mode here, but I’m struggling to break myself away from this line of thinking. However, this is the way I lived most whole life – in pursuit of accomplishing things. Coralis, who has been in Kenya for almost 20 years and from whom I am taking over the H.O.P.E. project, is constantly reminding me to stop thinking this way. However, this is yet another journey for me.
All of this hit home for me at Mass yesterday. The Gospel reading was the story of Martha and Mary (LK 10:38-42). Jesus entered the village of Martha and Mary, who were sisters. While Martha was busy serving, taking all the responsibility for entertaining, Mary simply sat at Jesus’s side just listening to him speak. Martha approached Jesus complaining that Mary has left her to do all the work and asked our Lord to tell Mary to help. Jesus said to Martha in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
I certainly identify more with Martha in this story than I do Mary. There is always a long list of things that needs to be done. If I don’t do them, who else will? At least that seemingly is my typical mindset. So, it is with my ministry. I have all these things I want to do, all these things I want to accomplish, not enough hours in a day. Sometimes I feel like I’m back at work at IBM. I am in no way complaining as Martha did that no one is helping me, but rather see myself in the Gospel passage, like Martha, as being too obsessed with achieving and accomplishing things than in seeing what is right in front of me. That is, being present to see and experience Christ in everyone I encounter and in all that I do.
As Jesus told Martha, there is no need to be anxious and worried about so many things. Jesus reminds us that there is only need of one thing, the better part, which is him. I don’t think that Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t work hard for the things that we want to accomplish. Rather I think he is saying that we need to keep things in balance and perspective. We both need to work for what we want but also make sure to recognize him in what we are doing. We all need to work to provide for ourselves and our families. We all need to work to help those we are trying to serve. However, Jesus is also telling us to not get bogged down and overwhelmed by these things. Jesus is telling us to make sure to recognize him in the people we encounter and in the world around us along the way. By recognizing Jesus in the things that we are doing, the great things we are trying to accomplish, as well as the smallest, mundane things we do in our daily lives, we unite ourselves with him in accomplishing them. If we do the things we want to accomplish with true love, we bring Jesus’s presence alive in them and in ourselves.
This is my challenge. St. Anne, pray for me.
God is good.
