onehouse

Damn turtles.

Things that are/should be slow whether I want them to be or not:

Sigh. Producing the magazine.
Eating really good chocolate.
Learning guitar again. Ouch. Soft fingers.
Gardening and waiting for home grown food.
Sketching/Drawing.
Learning to pay attention/Listening.
Conversion. Transformation. Real change for the good.
Community and friendship.
Training for a 10K. 12 training sessions down. 27 to go.
Dealing with chronic pain.
Turtles. I really wish there were some turbo-powered turtles. Everything would be better if turtles moved faster.  A girl can dream.

Time and time again...

After a day of getting rid of papers and cleaning up the yard, I was able to spend a little time with my great-niece as her parents searched the mall for some much needed clothes. She's very mellow and we soon tucked into a routine of slowly pushing the stroller and circling the shops, sipping apple juice, touching the dangling sleeves of coats and blouses in many colors (is this red? is this red?), and looking this way and that. We must have walked for over an hour and it seemed like we were in a time outside of time. There was nothing we wanted and she, being overtired was happy just to be sleepy and look at all the people while occasionally reaching up to play with her fuzzy pony tail holder.

I've been thinking about time outside of the constraints of time a lot. The habit of listening and trying to pay attention has changed my sense of time. I swear there are places where I can see a moment stretching out longer than seconds and minutes if I am prepared to pay attention to it. I think it would look like one of those film scenes where someone is standing still as the world moves swiftly around them.

The other day I was talking about transformation with someone. In a previous religious life, transformation was all about behaviour modification and fulfilling potentials that someone else perceived I may have. But very little actually changed in the world in me or about me.  In this listening life, the changes are so slow - like rings in a tree formed over time. But the changes, when they can be noticed have an ongoing presence. They become a whole part of you - inward, outward. They are biological and spiritual and emotional. They have little to do with that old fluffy icing that is meant to impress but ends up scraped on the side of a plate while we search for the good stuff. 

Captivity.

The day decided that it was going to be ruled by waiting and slow. There was no way out of it. A small bit of snow turned the 16 blocks of road from my house to a main avenue into a skating rink. First gear, drive slowly, pay attention, and watch the street lights reflect red and green off what was once harmless asphalt.

I took a friend's mom to an Eye Clinic. A few days ago she had some mysterious spots show up along with some blurriness. She waited for eye drops and then machines and then more eye drops. I read my graphic novel while people wondered why someone my age was reading a "comic". The spots turned out to be quite serious and so we drove to the nearest hospital for another test.

We waited for more drops and then an injection of dye and dozens of pictures of the back of the eye. And now I'm back home and she will wait for the doctor to interpret the pictures.

I live in a country of amazing abundance where someone can find a problem inside your head in under 5 hours. And you walk out of your sparkly Canadian hospital without a bill to pay. I watch, in traffic and in doctor's offices, at how impatient we are with this abundance, wanting it delivered faster and faster, wishing our cars could handle the ice, and worryng about being late for work. I don't think we have any idea of what "slow" really means.

Myths of Efficiency.

I've been collecting names lately. I've been reading the name tags of people behind the counter. I'm terrible with names so I won't remember them unless I write them down but I just want to know that there is a person there when I am picking up whatever it is I want or need at the moment.I repeat the name to myself and try to look at the person. As a teenager, I worked at a fast food place. I know the person behind the counter could care less if I know their name or not. They want me to go away just as much as I want to be on my way. But I need to know that my world is populated by people and not just by different uniforms. Even if someone is doing a poor job, it's a person doing a poor job and not just a logo with a body inside of it.

It slows me down to do this. I remember the story that someone told of a social worker who started centering prayer. She became less efficient. She found herself slowing down at work and taking more time with clients. So much for doing these disciplines so you can do or be more. If you start engaging some of these practices, the very definition of what life is begins to change. Could this be part of what is meant by us decreasing as the presence of God increases?

A good warning...go slow.

How many there must be who have smothered the first sparks of contemplation by piling wood on the fire before it was well lit. The stimulation of interior prayer so excites them that they launch out into ambitious projects for teaching and converting the whole world, when all that God asks of them is to be quiet and keep themselves at peace, attentive to the secret work He is beginning in their souls.

And yet if you try to explain to them that there might be a considerable imperfection in their zeal for activities that God does not desire for them, they will treat you as a heretic. They know you must be wrong because they feel such an intense appetite for the results which they imagine they are going to accomplish.

Thomas Merton

Change of perspective.

Kathleen Norris writes:

The word “conversion” comes from the Latin for “to turn around.” Thus it denotes a change of perspective but not of essence: a change of view but not location. Any sort of change, however, can be scary, a threat. Too sudden a turn, too quick a spin, and we can’t adjust to what our eyes are telling us. We lose our balance.