The Slow Lane

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), May 14, 2006, by the Reverend Christine Brownlie.

Sometimes the most ordinary object can elicit an extraordinary response. Recently I was at a meeting with my Virginia UU colleagues, and after lunch I went over to the beverage table to get some tea. My friend, the Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris, poured some tea into a lovely china cup and placed it on a saucer before handing it to me. As my fingers grasped the saucer, I admired this elegant pair and to my surprise I felt a sense of calmness — a sort of ahhhh — wash over me. I felt that this prim and proper cup and saucer were whispering to me, “Slow down. Sip the tea. Enjoy it. Take your time.”

Take your time. I don’t know about you, but I seldom take my time. I live with a habitual sense of hurry. I speed walk, speed read, and speed talk. I habitually inhale my meals — at a rate that alarms people. If I’m sharing a meal with someone, they often look at me with some astonishment—my goodness, you’re finished already? Sometimes my thoughts feels as if they are going in three directions at once. If I’m forced to slow down by a long stop light, or a line at the post office, I can feel my stress level rise and my pulse rate jump. I want to keep moving… Let’s go!

I wasn’t always like this: driven and rushed. During my early childhood, my parents often called me “slow poke” because I liked to take my time. The neighborhood kids walked to school in a bunch and I was often the straggler—so far behind the others that I wasn’t even bringing up the rear. I would stop to look at the neighbor’s gardens, the birds, the dogs sleeping in the yard, and whatever else caught my fancy. I dawdled over my school work and was often kept in from recess as a punishment. I rarely had time to finish my lunch — I liked life in the slow lane.

By the time I was in middle school, I was a changed child. My parents and teachers had pushed and prodded and nagged to get me up to speed — and it worked! It seems that I learned their lessons well, and I still live by them. Maybe you do too.

What I’m starting to realize is that all this rushing around isn’t gaining me more time to do the things I enjoy or would find relaxing. I don’t have more time to spend with friends or family — who has dinner parties or impromptu picnics anymore? When was the last time you sat on the porch or the deck with your neighbors, talking about nothing of great import, just getting to know one anther? Can you recall a rainy day when your family staged an all-day board-game marathon with your kids? Or did you spend that day cleaning house and answering e-mail? Who has time for foolish luxuries like dinner parties and silly games?

I know we like to blame technology for this sense of being squeezed for time. We talk about the tyranny of the urgent as a force that is taking over our lives. I think that just maybe we’re giving in to this tyranny too easily. Maybe we don’t need to buy the latest greatest, fastest gadget as soon as it hits the market. Maybe we could turn off the cell phone while we’re in the car or having lunch. Maybe we could take charge of the pace of our lives — if not all the time, at least part of the time. What if we were to get out of the fast land and move over the slow lane, just for a while, so that we could catch our breath, check out the scenery of our lives and reconnect with the people around us — and with ourselves?

I’ve seen signs of this shift away from speed — or at least the longing for a change of pace — in my own life. I keep buying art supplies, lovely yarns, and musical instruments. I can’t say that I’ve used them much, but they’re there, reminding me to take a break, slow down, look, listen, smell, imagine, play.

I see signs that other people are chafing at the pace of their lives. I read about communities that are banning Sunday sports for kids, families that are reclaiming the dinner hour at least a couple of times a week to gather and share a meal. There is a growing interest in yoga, Tai chi, Chi Gong, and meditation, which are all ways to achieve physical fitness and mental clarity by slowing down — sometimes to a full stop. If you think you have to be moving fast to get fit, try standing still with your arms in front of you as if you were hugging a tree. Hold for three minutes—you’ll be amazed at how soon time slooooows down and how much your muscles ache.

Some of us may find one of these practices helpful as we try to slow our minds, but if that’s not your style, I’d like to suggest that you consider a practice that is offered by the Polish Poet, Ionna Warwick. She calls it “Slow Mind,” and she says practiced faithfully, “Slow Mind” can lead to the discovery and growth of the “slow self,” which she understands as another name for the soul. Warwick believes that her own practice of Slow Mind has transformed her sense of personal identity from a “driven type A” to a “slow ecstatic” who has a strong mystical sense of her place in the world.

Warwick recognizes that for many of us, the very thought of giving up our speed-driven way of life is enough to provoke confusion and anxiety. She suggests that the novice practitioner start … well … slowly. Begin with something small and familiar: a household task, bathing, eating dinner, walking, and do it very slowly with attention, an attitude of effortlessness, and passionate patience. Warwick herself favors two activities: reading poetry one word at a time, and brushing her hair, which she does very slowly for five minutes. She reports that through several years of faithful practice, she has come to a level of proficiency that she calls “Super Slow.”

I’ve been playing with this discipline of the slow mind off and on for several months, and I have to say that in the context of my own life, it’s difficult. I feel the pressure of deadlines and the inevitable phone calls, e-mails and other realities of life — hungry cats, getting the trash can to the curb before the Waste Management truck rumbles down the street. And then I think of what my life was like when I had a family to care for. As that famous TV chef would say, let’s kick it up a notch — bam bam … here’s a couple of kids.

I remember the years when I was up to my ears with the tasks and stresses of parenting, meeting myself coming and going as I drove my two sons to their various activities with stops at the local fast food establishment for dinner. Slowing down the pace was generally not even something I thought about until I got to the end of the day, exhausted and frazzled. And the next day would be more of the same. If anything has changed for families in the past 20 years, it’s that life is even busier and that grandparents are being pulled into the fray as well.

So … Maybe you’re asking yourselves what possibility does your life hold for the development of slow mind and that ecstatic soul? Is there hope for you-for any of us — or is this just one more self-help idea that sounds great in theory but soon falls apart when you try to carry it out in real life and real time? If this sounds like your life, then I’d like to offer you some thoughts about how to move out of the continuous frenzy of too many demands and find a way to give yourself some slow mind time. Last year at General Assembly I picked up a book called Quiet Mind: One-Minute Retreats from a Busy World by David Kundtz. For several months I’ve been trying out some of his suggestions and I’ve found them to be a real help on the path of Slow Mind development.

His basic idea is that we need to take time to do nothing every day. He calls these moments of doing nothing, “still points.” And he encourages us to structure our lives so that we can devote a few minutes every day to doing nothing at all. If that seems impossible for you, there’s still hope. You can train yourself to grab brief segments of time — sitting at the long traffic light, waiting for the dentist to return with the X-rays, or walking down a corridor to a meeting-- to allow the mind to become quiet. Kundtz takes a still point every time he hears the microwave beeper go off — a noise that he says is particularly irritating to him and which now tells him to stop, take a breath, slow down.

In reading his book, I discovered that every day holds many unexpected opportunities to practice the discipline of slow mind. Brushing my teeth, stirring a pot, folding clothes, waiting for the Web site to download or the printer to churn out the sermon. These are all activities that allow me to quiet my mind and be present in the moment and the physical sensation of whatever I’m doing. My mind may prattle on, but I can still breathe, let go of tension, and observe what’s going on internally and externally,

Another idea that Kuntz offers is to use post-it notes stickers: little colored dots, or other visual cues to remind yourself to stop, take a breath, and let your mind slow down. I have put a couple of butterfly stickers on my computer, and when I notice them, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, quieting my mind and focusing.

What benefits might we gain from the practice of slow mind techniques? I would guess that some of us might lower our blood pressure a little and find that our heart rates is a bit slower. We might be more patient with our children, our spouses, even ourselves. We might be able to let go of some of the small things in life that irritate us. We might even learn to love that long red light or the line at the post office.

Over time, we might reconnect with ourselves by learning to go deeper and hear the longing of our own thoughts and minds. We might rediscover our creativity, a sense of play and freedom that we left behind when we entered the rush-rush world of adulthood. We might have the patience to allow things to develop over time instead of pushing ahead, telling ourselves that we need to just get the work done. Believe it or not, there are people who take years to create a garden or furnish a home, devoting time to the process of finding just the right plants, the right furnishings, the right colors to achieve the vision that they carry in their heads. There are cooks to devote hours and even days to the process of creating a memorable meal that is not meant to be consumed in twenty minutes, but savored and enjoyed. You could read a novel slowly: a page every half hour, a poem word by word, savoring the complexity of meaning and nuance.

Summer always seems like a good time to move into the slow lane, to talk slowly, walk slowly, to pull at least some of the weeds out of the garden in slo-mo, feeling the roots letting go of the soil, watching for the pink earthworms slip back into the rich earth. How long can you make an ice cream cone or a tall lemonade last? When was the last time you lay on your back in the grass and watched the clouds float by or the stars come out?

Some of you might consider all of this as frivolous nonsense. There is so much to do—so many issues that need to be addressed, wrongs to be rights, battles to be won. And you’re right, there are. But I’d ask you to consider the words of Ed Hayes, who suggests that

“When we lack the proper time for the simple pleasures of life — then we have missed the purpose of life.”

This is not some New Age teaching. Taking time, making time to be centered, present, still and open to the beauty, tragedy, and great mystery of life is a teaching that is found in many traditions.

So I encourage you—to take time today –maybe just a few moments to slow down, grow your soul. Sink into silence, open your heart to the world around you. Slowly please. Take your time. Travel in the slow lane now and then and see, hear, taste, and feel the simple pleasures of life — and be the richer for it.

May it be so.

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