Transformation: Unhurriedness and Changing the Way We Think, Part 2

We learn to think in Both-Ands so that we can hold tension and, thus, be held by God, who holds all tension.  But we can further expand our capacity for living in tension by asking "God, how can you be so good?" By asking this question, we train ourselves to live in awe, wonder, and curiosity, which opens our heart, rather than judgment and self-hatred, which shuts it down. This question another way to live into Both-Ands. “God, how can You be so good, to receive me when I am unsorted/still struggling/not where I think I should be?"

Self-judgment and self-hatred, after all, takes many people out. They get subsumed in Either-Or thinking: I'm not where I should be or who I think I should be, therefore I judge and hate myself. It's black and white thinking of the worst kind, and it's a thousand miles removed from awe and wonder, which is the only humble posture in which we can thrive spiritually. Yes, shaking our heads in wonder at the mercy of God is a sign of maturity as we learn to accept not only our weakness but also our limitations, namely our inability to have everything figured out, and even our own selves out.  The only way to undermine our weakness is not to root it out of ourselves--not to hate it and judge it to death, which would make us the powerful ones, but to have it subsumed in the love of God, who accepts while we are still unsorted.[1]  This is how we are humbled and how we experience the grace and mercy of God who is not put off by our weakness.   

Thus, when we encounter things we judge about ourselves, we must learn to say wow.  "Wow, how can you be so good, God, that you are near to me and have brought me near, when I am still unsorted?" It's this nearness which actually transforms us, and the only way to step into it is to stop resisting our weakness! Asking "How can you be so good?" interrupts our brain's self-judgment and puts us into a posture of open handed-worship, which is also the posture in which we receive from God.  By asking it, we can live into a full and vibrant life of awe and wonder, from which miracles naturally follow. They always follow when we are open to God.

Again, it’s only through the practices of The Slow Life and unhurriedness, including a calendar that leaves literal space and margin for contemplation, that we can see, hear, and be transformed by the God of Love.  A calendar in which we have time to ask the question, "How can you be so good?" Without a commitment to The Slow Life and to unhurriedness, we will likely keep running at a breakneck pace as dictated to us by our culture.  If we are not intentional in establishing practices in The Slow Life, we will, by default, find ourselves in currents which, with their endless focus on productivity and success, bear little space for fruitfulness.  But in unhurriedness, God can make us aware of what life is really about, and we can live in the awe and wonder that transforms us. 
 

[1] Again, as Paul makes clear, this has nothing to do with “continuing to sin so that grace may abound” (Romans 6:1), but rather with, having done all we can by our own will-power, to finally accept a Higher Power.

Transformation: Unhurriedness and Changing the Way We Think (Embracing Both-Ands)

Unhurriedness as the core commitment of The Slow Life means creating space to contemplate God’s mercy so that we can escape our egocentric thinking.  Such thinking is almost always Either-Or.  If I become successful, I’m “in.”  If I’m not successful, I’m “out.”  It's all about how well we can do and how well we can prove ourselves, so we can be powerful on our terms without having to be dependent on God for any one else.  We live in a culture in which we are trained to think in such terms: how much money do we have, how many "likes" has our Instagram post gotten, and on and on. Thus, we grow up trying to minimize all of our weakness and maximize all of our strengths.  This is always the dominant pattern in any culture, while the way of God will mean existing focusing not primarily on success but rather on fruitfulness.  Fruitfulness only comes from becoming open to God, and becoming open to God means humbling yourself into a new way of thinking, replacing Either-Or with the capacity for Both-And thinking.

I am saint (I’m adopted) AND I’m a sinner (I’m not whole and cannot be whole on my own).

I’m unworthy AND I’m fully loved. 

I’m unsorted AND yet God has said “yes” to me.

Scripture always points us to embracing these sorts of paradoxes, probably because then we learn not to have everything perfected sorted, which is the only posture in which we can come to God.  Consider these examples from Scripture and tradition:

Proverbs 26:4 tells us, “Don’t answer a fool according to his folly.”  Then in the next verse, we are told, “Answer a fool according to his folly!”

Jesus says that if you deny him, you will have no part with him (John 13:8), and yet Peter denies Jesus, and Jesus restores him (John 21)!

Furthermore, God is Three and One.  Jesus is human and divine.  God is sovereign and we have free will.  Truly, paradoxes abound.

When we can accept such paradox, we leave behind the pursuit of "having it all figured out" and enter into the mystery of God's love.  We are free, further, to acknowledge both our successes and our failures without allowing either to define us. We can acknowledge that our identity doesn’t come from success but from God, and that God holds all of us, including the shiniest and the messiest parts. 

Practically speaking, we expand our capacity to think in Both-Ands (and thus, move more fully into the mercy of God) either by suffering or by engaging spiritual practices. Suffering convinces us not only that we aren't in ultimate control but that we are finite, and that God is still intimately with us in our weakness.  Spiritual practices, like silence and prayerful contemplation, is likewise an acknowledgement of our limitation and our weakness.  It is moving into a dependent state, where we acknowledge we don't have everything figured out. This is not natural for any of us, but with practice, we can expand our capacity to sit in awe and wonder and tension, opening us to God and, ultimately, to freedom and fruitfulness.

Transformation: Unhurriedness and Contemplation

It’s seeing and hearing Who God is and thereby becoming open to God that transforms us.  Paul accentuates the importance of seeing God and describes it with a Greek word translated “contemplation”: the intentional act of seeing, beholding, and meditating on an image. "And we all,” he writes, “who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”[1] 

What is the veil here mentioned?  It is, Paul makes clear, a way of seeing.  Or rather, a way of not seeing.  A filter, if you will, and specifically a filter which keeps us only seeing an approach to God based on success and on “getting everything right” rather than embracing and celebrating our weakness, humbling ourselves before God.  (In the same letter to the church at Corinth, Paul writes that “God’s power works best in weakness.”[2])  This filter, for the Jews, was the Jewish Law, the five books of the Torah. But we humans are always re-creating laws for our own time and context by which we can focus on impressing others or coming to God based on our success rather than embracing the call to rejoice in our weakness, our unsortedness, our "not having everything together" or "figured out."[3]

Indeed, The Slow Life is connected to the contemplative Christian tradition of creating space to see and hear God so that we can escape merely human ways of thinking about what success is and so that, in quiet, our addiction to noise and our fixation on success can be confronted. In unhurriedness, we are invited not only to be free, but also to be weak. To accept our limitations. To say "no" rather than believing we must always say "yes." To confess we can not be all things and be all places. God, after all, is not, as Henri Nouwen says, concerned primarily with success or strength.  He’s focused, rather, on fruitfulness.[4]  And fruitfulness cannot fully take place in us without a commitment to unhurriedness. There's no other means by which we can become open to God and His work within us.

Fruit, it must be said, is produced by the Spirit within us.[5]  We don’t produce it; rather, it is produced in us as we become open to God.  This is not word-play.  This is a fundamental reality of spiritual life which you must awaken to if the branch of your life is to be filled with the fruit of the vine (to use another New Testament metaphor).[6]  Again, we only become open with any consistency when we have some dedicated space in which we practice unhurriedness. Contemplating Jesus, as Paul means it, surely involves moving at a pace at which we can be present with the world around us and our own spirit and body.

Imagine Moses--he of the unveiled face--ascending Sinai to behold God. Imagine him measuring every footfall. Imagine him fully present in his approach of the Divine. We need some such space in our own lives, to come before the God of burning fire. It may be a long walk around our neighborhood each morning. It may mean deep breaths as we welcome the Spirit of God. Heck, I do some of my best unhurried slowing down and prayer in the shower.  Whatever the case, we must develop a liturgy and a life of habits in which we have time practicing slowing down and being present. As we practice unhurriedness, we will grow in our ability to inhabit quiet spaces well.

When I am moving too fast for too long, I have a practice which helps bring me back into awareness of God's presence. I ask, "What do I hear?" and I listen to the noises  around me, naming each thing. I do that with every sense: "What do I see?" "What do I taste?" "What do I smell?" "What do I feel?" By bringing myself into contact with my body, I bring myself back into an unhurried awareness of God who created all and who dwells nearer than my very breath. In this awareness of God (who of course, is  with me even when I am unaware), there is space to become grounded again in the love which produces fruit within.  

Whatever the practice and however we create unhurried space and margin, such space is needed to receive God's work. As sure as the farmer needs sunshine, so we need unhurriedness to see and be transformed by God.

[1] 2 Corinthians 3:18, NIV

[2] 2 Corinthians 12:9

[3] Again, 2 Corinthians 12:9

[4] Henri Nouwen.  Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith.  HarperOne, 1997.  Reading for January 4th. 

[5] See Galatians 5:22-23.  “But the Holy Spirit produces (emphasis mine) this kind of fruit in our lives…”

[6] John 15:5