How Do You Slow Down When It Goes Against the Grain?

If you are a regular reader of my blogs, you might remember my mentioning that my oldest son, Brian, chided me a bit about working too hard a couple of years ago, and that I should “slow down and smell the roses” as they say. I have been working (!) on that ever since — without a lot of success. (Granted, I have, more or less, succeeded in participating in only one of our two services on Sunday mornings unless I’m preaching — except last Sunday, when my colleague and Rector of St. Martin’s was out of town!) But as the title of this blog suggests, slowing down goes against my grain. In fact, I get restless with a “free” afternoon at my disposal, and I can always find something that needs to be done on my weekly list. Like plan my next blog, for example.

But I do try to observe a quiet period every afternoon (as my youngest son calls it, “unstructured time”) to sit in my bedroom chair, meditate and pray, read my latest novel and/or listen to NPR for a bit. And this past week, I pulled out a few clippings that I have collected and stored in the back of my Bible. And so, given this blog topic, I would like to share with you two of my favorites that I have saved over the years.

The title of the first clipping is, “Slow me down, Lord!” I believe that the writer is still anonymous — at least the well-worn copy that I have does not indicate an author. Even if you’ve heard or read this before, I believe that in our success-driven culture, the words still ring true. About halfway through this little prayer is the following:

Teach me the art of taking minute vacations ... of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from a good book. Remind me each day of the fable of the hare and the tortoise, that I may know that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward into the branches of the towering trees, and know that they grow tall because they grow slowly and well. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny.

If you look at the lead photo and the second one below, you will see that I live surrounded by very tall trees. (They don’t call my neighborhood Pine Dale Farms for nothing!) But in the second photo, in the middle is a struggling and unusually tall Crape Myrtle, reaching up to the sky to catch a bit of sunlight amid the tall trees that surround it. Something like me in my struggle to slow down a bit and turn my face toward the Sun.

The second of my saved clippings is a piece authored by Barbara Brown Taylor that appeared in The Christian Century on Nov. 3, 1999. Toward the end of her piece she writes the following:

I do not mean to make an idol of health, but it does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty, and when the ones we love most are the ones we see least. When we lie down to sleep at night, we offer our full appointment calendars to God in lieu of prayer, believing that God — who is as busy as we are — will surely understand.

And as Taylor writes, “at the very least it means that some of us have decided to deviate from the ... culture’s values, and to take back some of the sacred time we have too easily surrendered to other gods.” I, for one, am trying. And my hope — even if you are not particularly religiously inclined — is that the readings here and my own struggle might inspire you to kick against the goad of our ambitious and driven culture and slow down a bit to chat with a friend, pet a puppy, smell some flowers and turn your face to the sun, giving thanks for just being alive in this day that’s been given to you — living in joy, gratitude and love.

Amen, brothers and sisters. Food for thought.