Try Slow
How to sink into a human pace this summer: 7 takes
Take more time. Cover less ground. (Thomas Merton)
I first read these words in an email from a monastery. Right away I wrote them down in the book of wisdom I keep on my writing desk. When I met with a colleague later that week, she had the same words perched on a notecard by her computer.
We are both women who rush, who do too much, who want to cover every inch of ground.
We laughed that the same words found us both.
//
When I first scribbled down those lines from memory, early one morning before caffeine kicked in, I wrote the opposite:
Take less time. Cover more ground.
Ironic, isn’t it? Exactly what a technology-driven, consumerist culture teaches us to do. Go fast, leap long, hustle and grind. Never stop, never slow, never stay stagnant.
Resistance takes work. Religion must teach us to swim against the current.
//
One day on vacation, we found ourselves in a sleepy seaside town, driving slowly on one-lane bridges. I spotted a roadside sign painted on a hand-hewn slab of wood.
“Try slow.”
The homeowner could have written “slow down” or “watch your speed” or “children at play.” But instead they offered an invitation into another way of life, a world foreign to many who speed by.
Try slow. See what happens.
//
“Of the nearly eight million words that have floated through my head onto a page, some of which have been deemed publishable, I am happy with about four dozen sentences. Four of those sentences I think are especially fine. I weep whenever I read them in public, mostly in the thought of having been lucky enough for those words to have chosen me and for my having been smart enough to say yes to them when they came my way.
I am absolutely convinced of this: the more I am willing to go slow, to treat each blank page as a gift, to pay attention to each word and each phrase and each sentence, and to be patient as they come to me, the more likely I am to wander into being the writer I am meant to become.”
– Robert Benson, “Dancing on the Head of a Pen”
//
Whenever I reach my wits’ end with a small child’s fit, I fling myself back upon a practice from my early years of motherhood.
I sing an old hymn at a snail’s pace.
“Be Thou My Vision” or “For The Beauty of the Earth” or “I Sing the Mighty Power of God.”
I sing it so slowly that the young one looks at me strangely. But my soul settles into the stretches between verses.
I feel God pulling me into a slower pace, more human, more divine.
Suddenly I am starting to breathe deeper, too.
//
Try something outrageously slow this summer. Chew your food slowly. Read a book slowly. Pray an old prayer slowly. Take a slower walk than your usual pace.
Do nothing for five full minutes.
What do you notice?
Peace,
Laura
p.s. I announced on Instagram yesterday that I’m offering a free virtual group mentoring session on Sept. 8th in honor of the 40x40 initiative supporting women in the workforce. The response was delightfully overwhelming, so I’ll likely be adding a 2nd session in September! Learn more here and click here to register if you’re interested in learning more about the professional side of writing & speaking.
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Find my books here: Everyday Sacrament | Grieving Together | Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth | To Bless Our Callings | Living Your Discipleship
For someone who rushes her way through life, your words resonated so much to me.