69

"Unfinished Business!"
by DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE

I suppose everyone who has been privileged
to talk a while with Robert Frost has come
away treasuring a memory of that conversation
fruity with wisdom. After such an hour with
the great bust easy old poet, beside the hearth at
his Vermont farm, I found the casual words
above to linger longest in my thoughts.

Roll them about in your mind, you worried
and hurried ones! Savor the richness of time
and patience, of hope and faith, that lies in this
simple utterance. For there is much in the business
of our lives that we cannot hasten, for all
the urgency of speed that today devils us. There
is much--and this is true of the most important
of our affairs--that cannot be concluded in a
day, or a week, or a month, but must be let to
take a guided course. We are too prone to bring
it with us to our rest, and thrash it over uselessly.
So I, for one, over and over, give thanks
for the slyly sensible remark by Robert Frost.

He was, when I come to think of it, living
as Nature lives. When an acorn fallen
from an oak at last splits husk, sprouts, and
begins to take root, how much unfinished business
lies ahead of it! It has no contract with the
sun and rain to have become an oak tree by a
certain date. But with their help it will grow
until it towers and spreads shade, in the good
time we call God's. We ought as trustingly to
let our plans and problems ripen to solution,
knowing there is another Hand in the business
beside our own. To leave a question to "unfinished
business" is not to abandon the task. It is
to attain the serenity which will give us strength
to carry on with it when the call to effort comes.