The Slow Way: 100 Episodes of The Slow Way Podcast
Celebrating all the stories, all the practices, all my attempts to tell the truth.
The first episode I wrote for The Slow Way Podcast was in January 2020, a lifetime ago. Angelina, my faithful editor, was committed and ready to press play on the whole thing. I found the music we still use. I recorded four episodes that will never be seen or heard by anyone. And my brother Jason Boyett designed the graphic we still use around here.
Life was hard that year, and I was desperate to write, to move forward with a career that felt stalled. But I was also working to find the kind of school my oldest son could thrive in and we most definitely weren’t there. I was trying to heal from the post concussion syndrome I had lived with since a fall down some concrete stairs five months before. I was pushing back on Ace’s IEP team who were not offering the one on one support, or multitude of interventions he needed from his school. And I was still reeling from his autism diagnosis and coming to terms with all that it would mean for him and our family.
Two months later, Chris and I were in Northern New Jersey looking at houses, considering a move. One week later, the world had shut down. It wasn’t the right time to start a new podcast.
It was almost two years later when the first episode of The Slow Way released. After I got our family moved to New Jersey in the middle of a pandemic, after we found a school district willing to pay for the care Ace needed, and a school that worked for my older kids, after treatments for my post concussion syndrome, after Chris found a job he was excited about, I started to write again. And life is always unpredictable. I planned for my first episodes to release in December. It released. My dad died a week later.
Suzanne Stabile, my favorite teacher on the Enneagram has four mantras she lives by, which she has talked and written about often. They go like this:
Show up.
Pay Attention.
Tell the Truth.
Don’t Attach to the Results.
If we attach to the results, we will be tempted to manipulate the truth to ourselves or others, and we may fail to live authentically. I wrote the first three of her mantras on my kitchen butcher paper last week for all of us to read. Show up, pay attention, tell the truth. What a way to live. That’s what I’ve tried to do here in this space for the past 100 episodes, while I’ve grieved my dad’s death, fumbled my way through raising kids at all stages of development and challenges, become a part time youth pastor, written a book I am deeply proud of, and tried to relearn everyday how to show up and pay attention. Telling the truth is the work of this space. It’s the work of exploring what showing up has meant in my life these past two and a half years, and what paying attention looks like in the spiritual life.
Not attaching myself to the results is a process I’m still learning. I gave myself two goals when I started the podcast. One, I could never control who or how many people listened to it, but I could only make the kind of contemplative, prayerful podcast I would want, something that could help me pray in new ways, that might help me “pay attention to what’s real,” to help me search for the “true thing deep down underneath the surface.”
My other goal was hitting 100 episodes. I didn’t want to fade out based on numbers or time. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it all the way through. No quitting allowed.
I looked back at some of the episodes you all have loved the most. And they’re telling about who you are and what has rung true:
Episode 9: “Telling the Truth To Yourself” is one of my most listened to episodes. I wrote it while I was deep in the research process for Blessed Are The Rest of Us, and it shows. It’s about receiving and acting on the reality that we are not what we do or what we’re good at. I define faith as letting go of control, believing that the life of weakness is actually the life of the “Most Blessed.”
Episode 10 is up there in downloads as well. (I must have been on a roll!): “Your Definition of Love is Good and True.” I said, God is Love “moving toward all of us, calling each of us to come close, to experience a Love that transforms everything, and ultimately teach[ing] us what to do with the feelings in our chest: how to turn the feeling of love into a way of living that transforms our relationships, visions of ourselves, and our small worlds.”
Episode 34, “On Seeking God, Or Living Out Whole and Healthy Faith,” broached the question of whether or not faith is simply a mind trick. I suggested that faith requires integration with the body to be whole. I still like that idea.
There was Episode 46.: “Attending to Goodness: Wine, Hospitality, and an Invitation to Delight.” “Wine certainly isn’t the only way to practice slowness and gratitude,” I wrote. “But wine can teach us how to savor, how to notice what we enjoy, and how to find delight in the small gifts of this life. It can help us learn to practice joy together.”
And, of course, episode 42 called us to a rest that is communal, that changes the world. “We allow ourselves to stop so our brains can be restored, coated in restorative fluid, flushed of toxins. And the presence of the Divine meets us there in that restoration.”
Throughout The Slow Way letter and podcast, I’ve been seeking to answer the question of how we practice believing Jesus’s teachings about what makes our lives meaningful, how we make sense of our culture’s frantic pace when the invitation of Jesus is one of slowness, care, and attention. These questions are the overflow of my own story, and I am just so grateful you’ve joined me in the searching. What else is the spiritual life besides asking good questions and paying attention to the answers?
As Suzanne Stabile says: show up, pay attention, tell the truth. I’m so grateful you’ve been here with me as I’ve attempted to live these things in front of you, whether in this newsletter or through the podcast. You’ve listened to my never-ending stories of parenting, settling roots in a new place, pastoring teenagers, gardening, and all my reading. (So many books!)
I have honed my podcast voice. (At least a little!) I’ve always erred on the side of slowness, and boy, my episodes were S-L-O-W at the beginning! Maybe my pace is better these days? Either way, I’m glad you’ve settled in with me and stuck around to join me in every breath-prayer, lectio divina, construction paper craft, and imaginative practice. Thank you.
So I’ll end this reflection on our hundred episodes the way I always end the podcast:
Thanks for being here. Choosing a moment of quiet, and allowing yourself to be slow here is a way of refusing to conform with the culture around us. And look at us! We’re making space for a fuller vision of ourselves and others, making space for wisdom, making space for love. That, my friends, is no small thing.
No small thing at all.
A List of Things:
I’m taking the rest of the month off from this substack letter and the podcast. I’ll be back with new letters and episodes in August.
Do you listen to The Slow Way Podcast? Summer is a great time to catch up and give yourself a bit more space for the contemplative life. Take a listen!
Just a reminder that Amazon reviews make a big difference long term for the sales of my new book, Blessed Are The Rest of Us. Leaving a review is a way you can show your appreciation for my work, a way that means A WHOLE LOT to me. Click here to leave a review!
And as always, a reminder that Blessed Are The Rest of Us is available at 40% off the price of other booksellers at Baker Bookhouse. Just use the code SLOWWAY at checkout.
So proud of you!
You have much reason to be proud. 100 episodes is incredible, especially in the midst of so much LIFE. Congratulations!