The Slow Way: Being Set Free by Love, Being Set Free to Love
What if this is the thing? Settling into the reality of our lives, receiving it as it is. And being set free by love.
I don’t have time for long prayer sessions, y’all. Give me something short, sweet, and meaningful, because soon I have to talk to one of my large man-children about their feelings, or make Ace’s breakfast, or get on the phone with the insurance. Prayer at its best, I’ve learned, isn’t a matter of time spent, but a matter of connection and attention. It’s coming back to the core of my Source, and that’s where I find my purpose, my values.
I ordered Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayers from my favorite online used bookstore a couple of weeks ago because I saw a reference to it somewhere while I was writing a letter for all of you. As soon as it arrived and I read one of the prayers within it, my heart turned over. I know when a book will love me back. The Celtic Way of Prayer, which I read fifteen years ago, has been a book that loved me back as well—one of my top five books on the spiritual life, one I have returned to again and again. There’s something so human about the prayers of the Celtic Christian tradition—their rhythms, their love for the natural world, their insistence on the sacredness of the rituals of daily life. Celtic Benediction is going to be a friend as well. It has a simple guide for morning and night prayers, divided by the days of the week. And that’s all.
“The oldest forms of meditative prayer in Christian practice consist simply of a repetition of words from Scripture in the silence of the heart. In Celtic spirituality this discipline of silent meditation is viewed as opening the eyes of the heart in order to see God in all things,” J. Philip Newell says in the preface of Celtic Benediction.
This week I’ve been finishing the last bits of copyedits for Blessed Are The Rest of Us, while planning a retreat for my youth group this weekend. I’ve recorded several episodes of The Lucky Few podcast, and have washed a lot of clothes I haven’t folded (big piles of clean and wrinkled things on the table of the laundry room). I’ve taken Ace to two different doctor’s appointments and talked on the phone to two possible new therapists for him. I’ve gone to one high school back-to-school night and played ultimate frisbee with fifteen of my favorite teenagers, and marveled that I haven’t had a migraine in two weeks (!). I’ve had one good walk with a friend and one catch up phone call. I’ve made four dinners, jumped on the trampoline, and played catch with Ace. I’ve had real, meaningful moments of connection with my kids, and I’ve been awake at three am worried out of my mind about my kids. Five days can feel like a very long time.
I also met with my therapist this week and told her that the busyness of my life is a kind of shame to me. An ongoing inner voice tells me that I have to figure out how to fix the problem of my schedule, the required tasks, the intensity of my to-dos. And, as if I were answering the question she didn’t ask in return, I said, “There’s nothing in my life that is excess, no fat or wasted time that I want to carve off.”
It’s true. I love my writing life. I love my podcasts. I love pastoring teenagers. I love being a mom in this season of my kids’ lives (even if I’m out-of-my-mind worried about them). I expected my therapist to suggest that maybe I’ve done this to myself, filling my days with so much life as a way to keep myself from rest.
But she said the opposite: “It sounds like this is just going to be a really intense season.”
“Yes, but, I keep thinking, once I get through this week, I’ll finally be able to catch up on whatever it is that feels like it’s not getting my attention. You know, the laundry, my rest, my spiritual life, the overgrown bushes that are annoying my next door neighbor. Busyness makes me feel like I’m failing.”
Busyness has always made me feel that way. And since having kids and starting my writing career, busyness has always been part of the equation.
“What if you stopped criticizing yourself because you’re busy and started radically accepting this season of your life?” she asked me. “You said you love what you’re doing. You know that raising teenagers is intense. You’ve been writing a book!”
“It’s been a lot,” I said.
“Of course it’s been a lot! And maybe that’s your life, not something you’re doing wrong, not something you have to fix. Just something you can accept.”
Of course, if someone were to ask me if acceptance is part of the spiritual life, I would say absolutely. But that conversation this week has been flashing through the screen of my mind, forcing me to play it over and over. What if my busyness isn’t something I need to fix? What if God is inviting me to accept it in all its intensity and meaning? What if I can love the power of this wild ride I’m on and transform the thoughts that tell me I must be doing something wrong?
This is something I don’t have an answer for. The Inner Critic in my mind is quick to tell me that I need to get it together. But even as I’ve worked on the lesson I’ll be teaching my youth group this weekend about how we determine our values, how we learn to love the things God loves, I am coming back to this: My life, with its pediatric doctor appointments, its smorgasbord of Ace therapies, its wild games played with teenagers at dusk in the middle of Manhattan, its meaningful moments with my kids in my bedroom, its quick connections with friends, its unfinished laundry and undone yard work, and even its short-lived prayers on the porch in my pajamas — all of this is good. All of this aligns with my values. What if I stop pushing against it and just receive it?
This morning the Celtic Benediction prayer book invited me to this:
That wisdom was born with me in the womb
thanks be to you, O God.
That your ways have been written into
the human body and soul
there to be read and reverenced
thanks be to you.
Let me be attentive
to the truths of these living texts.
Let me learn
of the law etched into the whole of creation
that gave birth to the mystery of life
and feeds and renews it day by day.
Let me discern the law of love in my own heart
and in knowing it
obey it.
Let me be set free by love, O God.
Let me be set free to love.
What if that’s the thing? Settling into the reality of our lives, receiving it as it is. And being set free by love—the love of ourselves, the love of this season of our lives, the love of ones we’re charged to care for, and the love of God?
Discerning the law of love in our hearts, and being set free by it.
A Slow Practice
I recognize that not everyone is living a season as hectic as mine. Parenting in this season of teen years, and parenting an autistic, non-speaking child with a disability is a very specific sort of intensity. But there is always room for looking deeply at our lives—whether this time of life is packed to the brim, or whether it’s quiet and calm. Both extremes, or the space somewhere in between, are opportunities to practice accepting our lives as they are and noticing how we are being set free by love, how we are being set free to love.
Last week I invited us to sit down at the end of every day and sketch a moment we experienced. If you’ve been able to do that, I invite you to go back to those sketches right now. If you weren’t able to sketch like you wanted to, or missed that particular letter or podcast episode, maybe you could take the time to draw something right now. Last week I assured you that I am the worst among visual artists, so this is not about your ability to draw. It’s about how taking the time to draw engages part of our brains that we may not always tap into, which just might open us up to see our lives in a new light. It allows us to pay attention to our life, despite its wild energy, or its quiet simplicity.
We’ve talked around here about the spiritual practice of “looking with love” at the people around us, and at ourselves. But I wonder what it would mean for you to look at your life—right now—with love?
Open up your sketches from this past week (or sketch a moment from this past week that you can use for this practice).
I want us to spend five minutes (I know! Five whole minutes!) gazing at the drawing or drawings with the eyes of our hearts. As you look with your full attention, you can say out loud, or internally if people are around, “Let me be set free by love, O God. / Let me be set free to love.”
Maybe something will rise up from those sketches and reveal what you haven’t noticed before. Or maybe you won’t feel anything or learn anything new about the moments you recorded from your life last week. Either thing is okay.
After five minutes of looking, let yourself close the time imagining what it might mean right now in your very real life to be set free by love.
Take a breath to thank God for that possibility.
Did you notice?
The Slow Way Letter showed up in your inbox on a Friday morning! This is something new around here, and a scheduling decision I’m planning to continue. I hope you’ll look for it every Friday. (And if you prefer your Slow Way time on Saturdays, by all means leave it twenty-four hours so you can read it when you want to!)
Micha, This is such a helpful and encouraging newsletter. I have found in busy seasons that it's helpful to look at the difference between busy and hurried. When you're in an intense parenting season (as you are and have been for quite a while), it's busy. Busy is inevitable, but external. It's our to-do list and the thousand things that come up and never make the list. But hurry is internal--the things we tell ourselves about the busy, and about ourselves. Like, "If I'm this busy it's because I'm important" or "I can't get everything done" or "I shouldn't be this busy"--that shame piece you mentioned. When we accept the busy as you wisely advise, we can let go of the hurry mindset that just adds another layer of stress. As you say, accepting the reality, but letting go of the sabotaging self-talk (hurry) will set us free.
God seldom calls the prophetic voice and life to the rest others get. Busy for God and family seem different than other types of busy. If you don’t find time to “rest” may you “rest” in His watch-care and sustenance.