Don’t Forget to Breathe
Someone told me that the earth travels around the sun at a speed of around 67,000 miles an hour. Sometimes it feels like my life is going that fast. The other day I committed to two different things on a Tue night at the same time. It might be time to slow down. I had to slow down when my car died. I stopped going three places every night and have spent more time at home. I think that our lungs are not the only part of our body that need to breathe and our mind is not the only thing that needs to sleep.
Slow down, be still, let go, we will
Be here, be now
Slow down, be still, breathe in, refill
Be here, be now
-Robbie Seay Band
When you slow down, you notice life. When I am in a car, the trip to any destination might yield the observance of traffic lights, road signs, or other vehicles. My Dad has an uncanny ability to spot a fox hundreds of yards off of a road while he is driving. I don’t notice hitchhikers until I am too far past them to stop. But when I ride my bike, things slow down. I see the mist rise off of fields as the sun hits them. I hear birds and wind and cows and rivers. Sometimes I just stop and rest in the moment. I take in everything that is before me. My journey is even more slowed on foot. I pay attention to animal tracks and strange insects. I notice the mosses and leaves. I watch the sky change color.
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
-Mary Sarton
This month, someone challenged me to copy the gospel of Mark by hand. Each time I start I ask God to show me something new that I had not noticed in my break neck paced, read the Bible in a year plan. Many times when I read the Bible it is like jumping into a cold lake: I throw myself in, swim about for a bit, and then run about my day. Copying each word and thinking about each phrase is more like slowly letting myself into hot water. I ease into the passage. I think about what Mark included and why he did. I notice more.
I was listening to an astrophysicist explain that we really have no sense of speed, only of acceleration. This is why we don’t feel that we are moving anywhere even though the world is screaming around the sun. We only feel the elevator drop or the car come to a stop. Even scientists can only measure relative distance. We clock cars based on how fast they move across the surface of the earth, while the earth swings around the sun, which is in the center of a galaxy that is also moving. Where the heck are we going anyway? What if my car is actually traveling 145,000 miles in the opposite direction of what I am driving? Never mind. My car won’t run.
Wisely and slow; They stumble that run fast.
-Billy Shakespeare
There are some things in my life that don’t even come to the surface until I am still. Issues I have not dealt with that go unnoticed until the oil and water are given time to separate. In the quiet of the morning or the loudness of the stars, God is given a place to speak. If my schedule is packed tighter than the briefcase of a teenage girl going to camp for the first time, there is no room for the voice of God. And when I speed-read the book of James, I feel like a man looking at his face in a mirror and getting distracted by a text message, breakfast, and last night’s episode of SNL.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
-Henry David Thoreau
George MacDonald said that ‘work is not always required, there is such a thing as sacred idleness.’ I think the Bible calls this Sabbath. Where I live, farmers let the ground rest. Sometimes the most productive thing to do is to stop doing, to slow down. In the hours carved out to do nothing I drink in the richness of the world around me. I nestle my heart up close to God’s. I take comfort in the fact that nothing needs to be done and I can sit and rest with the Creator. Then in returning to life, I hear the drumbeat of Jesus. I march at His pace and in His direction. So much worry comes by trying to keep up with people who are running faster than God.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
-Jesus
So don’t forget to breathe
Don’t forget to breathe
Your whole life is here
No eleventh hour reprieve
So don’t forget to breathe
Keep your head above water
But don’t forget to breathe
