The 3 P's
Last night, my 18-year-old son called me on his way home from work. “Mom, I have a new mantra for next week.”
He is a golfer, and we are right in the middle of (his final!) junior golf season. Last week, he played four days of competitive golf, including a round of 36 holes in a single day. (That’s an 8-10 hour day of golf. It’s as grueling as it sounds. My job was to meet him after every 9 holes with food, snacks, fresh socks, and drinks.)
(I’ve written about being a golf parent before)
This coming week, he has a three-day tournament, but only 18 holes each day.
This summer season has been challenging, both in terms of the pace and his play.
Golf is such a hard individual sport. Most golfers I know are incredibly resilient. They have to feel the sting of disappointment and frustration and then do it all again. We’ve been a golf family for years, so I know the routine. The frustration and exhaustion after a difficult round, paired with the delight of two or three holes where everything went right, those holes keep golfers coming back.
The mantra my son has adopted for this coming week of competitive golf is “The 3 P’s.” Process, patience, and presence.
I asked him where he learned this mantra. He said, “I just thought about it and realized that I need to work on those three things, and they all start with P.” We talked about each one and why it was important as he made his way home from work.
When I asked for his permission to write about the 3 P’s, he said, “Yes, but not MY three P’s.” So I’m grateful for his wisdom and willingness to share, and I’ll let what they mean to him stay his own. I will share what the 3 P’s are inviting me to this week, and maybe there will be something for you, too.
The 1st P: Process
Process, as a noun, means “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” My son was thinking of process as a noun.
I’m curious about process as a verb: “to come to understand or accept (something, especially a difficult emotion or personal situation) over the course of a period of time.”
Life is so often knotted and tangled. Process is an invitation to untangle, metabolize, and alchemize the challenging parts, and to let them find their proper place in the whole. And, it takes time! It’s not an instant healing; by definition, the process takes time!
Sometimes I need a process (n) to process (v). My process often involves a long walk and/or writing in my journal. I take inspiration and instruction from Julia Cameron and her writing and thinking about what she calls morning pages. (writing three pages, longhand, stream of consciousness every morning.)
Do I write morning pages every day? No.
Is it a tool that I keep handy and use when needed? Yes.
“Pages clarify our yearnings. They keep an eye on our goals. They may provoke us, coax us, comfort us, even cajole us, as well as prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. If we are drifting, the pages will point that out. They will point the way True North. Each morning, as we face the page, we meet ourselves.”
Julia Cameron, The Miracle of Morning Pages: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Most Important Artist’s Way Tool
The 2nd P: Patience
Golfers run into trouble when they rush. The same is true for me. I really like efficiency and effectiveness. But more often than not, what I really need is patience. To slow down, let things flow as they flow without trying to overmanage, which always (always!) results in annoyance and frustration.
Patience with process.
Patience with myself.
Patience with people.
I love the prayer/poem “Patient Trust1” by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. It begins,
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.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ “Patient Trust”
Every time I read this poem, I feel the invitations.
“Trust in the slow work of God.” I want to, but sometimes can God go faster?
Yes, I AM “quite naturally impatient in EVERYTHING to reach the end without delay.” But what purpose does my hurry serve? If I’m always in such a hurry, where can joy break in, where can peace reside?
The words from “Patient Trust” are the invitation to patience, which feels the most helpful (and most difficult) when I think about how I need to become more patient with myself, others, and the world around me.
The 3rd P: Presence
The 14th-century definition of presence is “abiding in a specified place.”
It’s hard to abide in the present. I like that the definition and history of presence includes “abide.” Abide means to “bear patiently,” to “endure without yielding,” and to “wait.” When people talk about presence, they often use the phrase “be here now.”
My question is, “How do I ‘be here now?”
The word abide helps me, especially the definition, “endure without yielding.” Of course, a question might be yielding to what? But it’s powerful, it’s meaningful, it’s descriptive, and it feels more helpful than a cliche just “be here now.”
Abide is a choice, a decision. It’s active, it’s purposeful, it’s intentional.
I think my son is onto something with these 3 P’s.
A Process, Patience, Presence, Blessing:
May you have a process (n) to process (v) what is unresolved in your heart and life. May the “intermediate stages” you find yourself in offer wisdom, grace, and joy. And may you endure without yielding in the sacred ordinary of your week
Can the 3 Ps be a mantra or an invitation for you this week?
What is your process (n) to process (v) the knotted parts of your soul?
Can you be patient with all that is unresolved?
What are you being asked to “endure without yielding?”
Read the following quotes slowly, and notice if a word or phrase sparkles. Sit with the phrase for a few breaths. See if there is an invitation you can carry through your week.
"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
-Lao Tzu
“Use your bad moments to discover what makes you tremble. Use your good moments to find your road to inner peace. But do not stop either out of fear or joy: the way of the bow has no end.”
― Paulo Coelho
Join with all those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt, and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticize those who do not think like them, people who have never once taken a step unless they were sure they would be respected for doing so, and who prefer certainties to doubts.
Join with those who are open and not afraid to be vulnerable: they understand that people can improve only once they start looking at what their fellows are doing, not in order to judge them, but to admire them for their dedication and courage.”
― Paulo Coelho
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.”
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)
“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.”
― Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces – Essays and Sermons on Faith, Love, and the Power of Words
A special note:
I’ve started a new Substack!
I’m about a year and a half into a four or five-year process of becoming ordained as a priest in the Episcopal church.
I’m starting an M.Div program in August and moving deeper into my formation.
I want to keep my writing here at Smaller and Deeper what it is, and I’m also ready to share more of what I’m thinking, feeling, learning, wondering about, and challenged by as I move forward in this calling.
Right now, this is a private Substack (meaning only people I share it with can find it). I might change that as it develops… or not… time will tell.
I plan to post regularish. I have lots of ideas, and I’m in an interesting period of transition, moving into several years of intentionally focusing my time and energy on my studies and practical formation.
If you would like to follow along, I welcome you! (You will need to subscribe to have access!)
