Is Slowness Holy?

    Is a question I wrote to myself, and then found today, scribbled on an index card in my desk. And while I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I wrote it, nor the circumstances that led me to that thought, I can imagine; I’ve been looking at videos of snails in slow motion courtship, have been sitting by the window in the morning drinking a cup of tea and watching the progress of clouds.

Think about it. We’ve all fallen under the spell of slowness: a dancer extending a leg in a slow-motion arabesque, a monarch butterfly wriggling loose from its translucent chamber, a drop of rainwater sliding down a windowpane.

Just this afternoon, teaching a class online for Orion Magazine, I showed my students a clip from the French documentary film, Microcosmos, in which the two (aforementioned) snails seem to be involved in a kind of slow-motion ballet of courtship. Yes. Snails. And set to an aria which gives the scene the elevated emotion of Puccini.

We are, for the most part, in a rush. Hurrying from one appointment to the next, one meeting to another, one meal to another. And so forth and so on, without cease. Or without much cease, anyway. And yet, we crave that which will engage our whole attention, bring it to such a focused point that our it can be slowed down, orchestrated, as if by a conductor’s hand. And so we take up birdwatching or bread-making, knitting or golf, oil painting, calligraphy. Even writing. Whatever harnesses us fully into the moment. And not just that, but that by the nature of such corralling, slows, and almost stops, time.

Is that what we’re after? To stop time? It seems so. Or, at very least, to slow it to near stopping, to hover above our own lives the way a hawk might balance almost motionless on a draft of air. Bliss.

And yet, when we send each other off we wish each other things like “godspeed,” as though the point is to rush to meet our maker. Well, what if we wished each other savoring. Wished each other a leisurely stroll, a long bath, time spent staring out the window.

So, if no one has wished you those today, I do right now. I wish you a deep breath. And then another. Time to watch the snails. To dig around in the wet spring soil. To sit down to bowl of well-simmered soup, relished one spoonful at a time.