Transformation: What is Unhurriedness?

The Slow Life is built on a commitment to unhurriedness and the practices of silence, Sabbath, and hospitality, which allow us to come to God and be renewed by God.  Unhurriedness is perhaps harder to nail down, less concrete than the other practices, and yet The Slow Life begins with a commitment to unhurriedness.

What is unhurriedness, exactly?

 The essence of unhurriedness is living at a speed at which you can be fully present, without undue regret over the past nor anxiety about the future, with enough margin to be fully aware and present with who Jesus is and what he is doing around you.  It is a posture of heart and mind which Alan Fadling calls “walking at Jesus' pace of grace.”[1]  It means creating space for your soul to deal with and release the anxieties that naturally build up within us, and it’s at the heart of Jesus’ practical picture of life in the Kingdom of God.[2]  And it is a posture which takes time and practice to cultivate. 

Unhurriedness is different than a mere lack of busyness.  You can have a lot to get done yet have a heart posture of unhurriedness in the midst of it.  And while you can be busy without being hurried, you can have little to do and yet be hurried in the midst of it.  At the same time, unhurriedness generally requires discipline which keeps us from being continually busy or over-busy, and that will often mean adjusting our schedules, embracing our limits, and saying “no” to certain commitments.  Thus, while unhurriedness is a commitment to a posture of heart and mind, it will generally entail concrete changes to our daily, weekly, and yearly schedule. 

How does this posture of unhurriedness fuel spiritual life in God?  Well, imagine a walk in the woods.  You’re on a three-mile loop and you’re walking for time, trying to get back to the trailhead in half an hour.  You’re focused on quick, long strides and maintaining a consistent pace.  Tree roots across the path are hurdles to be jumped, branches are obstacles to be avoided.  You are focused on your quickened breathing and your heartbeat.

Now imagine taking the same walk, but with three hours to spare.  You set an entirely different pace, much slower.  Would your experience be different?  From my own experience on such walks, I’m amazed at how much I miss when moving at a fast pace.  When I slow down, the tree roots cease to be obstacles to be avoided and become instead works of art to be appreciated.  At a certain pace, I am free to become aware of the way the branches and leaves move in the wind.  I see the light diffracting through the canopy, filtering down to the forest floor.  The point is, our experience of life is different when we are moving at different speeds.  The brain functions differently when we are focused on getting somewhere or getting something done versus on being present and aware of where we are. 

Now, of course not all hours or days or even weeks can be like that second walk, but can many or even most of them?  Or, can at least a part of each day be like that second walk?  Because it’s precisely on that walk that we become open to God in a different way.  When we are not focused on just getting something down or getting there, we can hear the voice of God with more sensitive ears.  Indeed, when we move at a pace in which our brain can focus on listening rather than on task, our hearts have space to flower outward.

This is precisely the point of The Slow Life and of a commitment to unhurriedness: it allows us to see and hear Who God is and what God is speaking.  If you don’t have space to see or hear Who God is, there is little catalyst for transformation.  There is no transformation without encounter and there is little space for encounter without intentionality.  Thus, we have to find practices that help us move at a pace conducive to encounter.  This does not mean God cannot break through to us in all sorts of times or places.  It’s just a lot easier to hear and focus on the radio when you’re sitting in a parked car than it is at 80 miles an hour weaving through traffic.  The same dynamic applies in our spiritual lives. 

[1] See Alan Fadling, The Unhurried Leader, IVP Books, 2017.  See also The Unhurried Life by Alan Fadling, IVP Books, 2013.

[2] See the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, especially Matthew 6:26ff

Transformation: The Culture(s) in Which We Live and Their Blind Spots (Why Hurriedness is So Pernicious)

After recently returning from Zambia, I was reflecting with a friend that every culture has a few blind spots which make it difficult to hear, let alone heed, Jesus’ invitation to transformation.  In that country, for example, it is common for men to have mistresses, even among conservative Christians and pastors.  As we drove down a Zambian highway, I asked my host, “So how do churches address that?”  Long pause.  “Well…they don’t, really.” 

I sat there, figuratively scratching my head.  This would not fly in the US, a culture hyper-concerned with sexual mores.  Yet the Gospel is always imprinting itself on a pre-existing culture, and we should not be surprised when there is unique resistance from a unique context to some part of the Gospel.  American churches are often Johnny-on-the-spot to point our moral standards around sex, but less so on, say, greed or gluttony.  And further, there is no doubt American culture—and American church culture—has a collective blind spot to our addiction to hurry.

Think about all the ways that on a daily basis we are encouraged to live hurried lives which may rob us from ever being fully present in the moment, over-stretched and over-stimulated, rushing us from one thought or desire or impulse to the next.  Facebook engages us in 1,000 conversations at once without requiring that we be fully present in any one of them, all the while feeding us carefully cropped and filtered images of how life “should be.”  The promise of social media is that by being plugged into technology, you can overcome loneliness by being “connected.”  But the connection, so called, can leave us feeling more alienated and alone.

Indeed, social media subtly encourages us to rush around trying to live up to ideal, if unattainable, images.  And there, right on your Facebook feed, you are encouraged, through an endless barrage of advertisements tailored specifically to you, to buy more and to have more.  Forget social media, they now play advertisements at many gas stations, as if we need every random moment of potential quiet plugged with a patch of noise!  And, you don’t have money to buy all these things that you “need” right now?  Buy it on credit!  You’ll have to run around paying it off, but at least you’ll have it.  Out of energy from all that running around?  Don’t worry, we have energy drinks and caffeinated lattes and herbal enhancers that will keep you going, like the Energizer Bunny. 

Truly, the message is all around us: resist and overcome your limits.  Your boobs are sagging?  Get a surgery!  You don’t feel satisfied, make more money! (And we’ll show you how…just buy our course, on credit, of course).  At the root of all this hurry is our fear of the ultimate slowdown, death itself.  By running around in hurried mode, we can avoid the aching longing of our soul which is crying out for life even as we settle for the cold consolation of numbing out, avoiding our fear of death.

To stem this wet-blanket party, let me say that I have a Facebook account, and I enjoy it.  I have a credit card and use it often.  And I like caffeinated lattes.  (Though, full disclosure, I have never had a boob job.)  Most anything enjoyed within clear limits and within the orbit of our conscience is no problem at all, as the Scripture makes clear.[1]  We live in an amazing epoch of technological progress, which is often worthy of awe and celebration as human beings live as creators, in the image of the Creator.  But Jesus also asks us to read the signs of our culture, and there’s no doubt we also live in a culture desperately rushed to find meaning, and sometimes through means that will never bear fruit.  We are led to believe that real life is one in which we “have it all,” whereas Jesus tells us that in losing our life (as we know it), we’ll find real life.  As followers of Jesus, we must recognize that the Gospel call to transformation will fly against the headwinds of the dominant cultural imperatives in which we live.  And one of the strongest imperatives in our culture is the drive to a hurried, frenetic, busy life, devoid of margin. 

Perhaps you can recognize the need for unhurriedness by thinking about your own life:

Have you ever had that sensation that you need to stop or slow down for your soul to catch up with your body?  No doubt you have; we all have that from time to time.  It’s the whisper of God’s Spirit telling us to stop and abide.  If you constantly feel this, it’s an indication that you need to re-order your life.  This turns out to be critically important but also elusive work.  We seem to be addicted to hurry, living at a “normal” speed that may actually do great damage to our souls.  How, then, do we follow Jesus and move forward as his disciples, committed to learning to live as he would teach us rather than by the dominant pattern of the culture around us? 

We can live into our discipleship by, as Dallas Willard said, “ruthlessly eliminating hurry from our lives.”  And this will mean a rigorous commitment to unhurriedness, established by practices which make The Slow Life a natural habit of our minds and hearts. 

[1] See, for example, I Corinthians 8ff.  Though “food sacrificed to idols” requires some cultural study for contextual understanding, the principle of following Jesus by honoring conscience is clear and transcends culture or era.

Transformation: The Problem of Hurriedness and Why We Love It

No doubt there are many reasons why The Fast Life is such a part of modern American life.  Heck, it’s often idealized as the life.  “Life in the fast lane!” and all that.  We get a lot from being hurried, even if we hate it.  Why might that be?  Before reading on, try to name at least three things that you, or people in general, get out of being hurried and busy.

Indeed, we do get a lot from hurriedness. 

On a basic chemical level, we get a dopamine rush when we accomplish things (which the makers of Candycrush and Angry Birds devoutly rely upon).  Hurrying and, through hurrying, accomplishing a lot, can be rewarding.  And obviously accomplishing things is a great thing!  But we can also lose ourselves in the process of “getting stuff done.”[1] 

Sometimes hurriedness makes us feel important.  “Look how much I have to do, I’m just so busy!”  One of my old Bible teachers had a poster on his classroom wall that read: A life full of activity gives the appearance of a life full of meaning.  Because we are up to big things, we get a feeling that we must be important, which is one of the deepest desires of our heart. 

Or, maybe what we get from hurriedness is a convenient avoidance mechanism which, unlike other ways of numbing out (alcohol, drugs, sex, or buying things, for a few examples), is actually praised in our work-obsessed culture and even, sometimes, in church culture.  By numbing out, we get to avoid deeper, uncomfortable questions that we’d prefer not deal with.  Perhaps Jesus really wants us to deal with some unresolved pain or unforgiveness rooted in our past, but by staying busy we can avoid his inconvenient voice.  In other words, hurriedness helps us avoid the silence we fear facing because it would make us confront our true selves.  Even if we desperately want the unhurried quiet space by which our souls could meet with God, there remains a fear—driven by vestigial remnants of The Human Paradigm—that is terrified about the idea of encountering God, fearing whether we will survive the encounter. 

All the while, we feel justified because, after all, “Look how hard I’m working and how much I’m doing!”  Indeed, hurriedness can often be a sophisticated system of avoidance with built in justification pre-emptively excusing us.  It is not as immediately self-destructive as other addictions, we rationalize.  And that might even be true.  Nevertheless, it can rob our souls from us, all under the guise of getting stuff done and being important.  No wonder Jesus warned us so consistently about building our lives on false foundations, such as self-importance.  No wonder he said, “Don’t live your whole life trying to save your soul only to find that you’ve lost it.”[2]  Certainly a part of finding our souls, in our context, means recognizing hurriedness and its underlying drivers, and further, that this recognition is an important spiritual matter.  Hurriedness and a lack of margin can cripple the journey of transformation before it begins.

This is not big news; no doubt most of us agree that this a problem.  And we probably all agree on the value of living at a slower pace beyond just “getting away from it all” for a week’s vacation.  Right?

Great, so let’s stop!  On the count of three, you are going to STOP being hurried.  One….two…

But of course, it’s not that easy.  We must confront the very stickiness of the problem and its whack-a-mole nature if we are to live The Slow Life, and this means recognizing and confronting that the problem of hurriedness is firmly instantiated not only in our hearts but also in the society in which we live. 

[1] Notice that, as with most if not all temptations, our temptation to live in constant hurry is the perversion of a positive thing.  We are meant to accomplish things and we are meant, in a sense, to be busy.  It’s over-focusing or over-relying on accomplishing things that is the problem.  Tim Keller points out that idolatry is always taking a good thing—like money or sex--and making it into an “ultimate thing,” which it was never meant to be.  (See Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller.  Viking Press, 2009.)

[2] A paraphrase of Matthew 10:39