The Slow Way: Lent, and Living in Turtle Time
When everything around us says to hurry, let’s remind ourselves that this Lent we’re living in Turtle Time. Slowing ourselves to pursue the life that truly satisfies.
On Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday, my husband and I took each other out for a mid-morning coffee and bookstore date (which, this lady might call The Perfect Date). The bookstore is a minimal shop—tiny, all cream and pastels—that sells mostly nature books. (It’s called The Nature of Reading. Cutest.) So we each stretched ourselves a little beyond our normal reading habits and bought one another books about the natural world. My book is about time and turtles. His is about finding a spiritual life in the woods. So maybe we didn’t stretch ourselves too far. We just took the topics we usually read about and added in some nature.
On Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell By Shattered Shell by Sy Montgomery might be the ultimate slow way book. It’s a memoir by a woman who so deeply loves turtles that she finds herself assisting at a place called the Turtle Rescue League, a small scale operation that takes in hundreds of turtles who are sick and injured. New things I’ve learned from this book: Turtles get crushed crossing the road all the time. (The women who run TRL can save their lives and mend their shells, and it sometimes takes years.) Turtles go for a lot of money on the black market. It’s a whole thing.
The marvel I keep circling back to is that the beauty of a turtle (and its ability to have lived among the dinosaurs and still be here with us today) is found in the fact that “everything takes a long time for a turtle. They live slowly. They breathe slowly.” Montgomery goes on to say that an olive Ridley sea turtle can hold its breath for seven hours in cold water, and that the heart of a red-eared slider can slow itself all the way to one beat per minute.
It feels appropriate that I would eventually circle back to a premise I made here last summer: We all get around two billion heartbeats in a lifetime. The question is how our bodies use those heartbeats:
A hummingbird visits a thousand flowers a day, can fly more than a five hundred miles without pausing to rest. [Brian Doyle] writes, “Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly….Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”
We can hummingbird those heartbeats, or tortoise them, I wrote. In that essay I said I would always choose the beauty of a hummingbird over a tortoise. But this book, y’all. It’s making me second guess myself. These turtles have something magical about them.
Of course, we don’t get to choose how fast our human hearts beat. We will never have turtle hearts (until the AI powers that be figure that one out). But we always have an invitation to learn from the wise ones among us, and the turtles and tortoises of the world may not be sexy, but they carry a knowing that just might settle our souls.
This Lent my husband has been reading a devotional book from the great Walter Brueggemann. Chris sent me this quote from A Way Other Than Our Own: “Lent is a question, a gift, and a summons,” Brueggemann writes. “The questions of Lent are: What are we doing? Are we working for that which does not satisfy? Are we spending for that which is not bread?”
A question, a gift, and a summons. We’re entering Week 3 of Lent. Today is Day 16 of our 40 days of reflecting on what we are doing, what we’re working for that does not satisfy, and what we’re spending our time and money on that is not bread.
I wonder if we can begin to use our time and resources more like a turtle and less like a hummingbird? If hummingbirds are our official creature of Easter, maybe the turtle can be our reminder of the posture of Lent.
As Montgomery writes, “In Arabic the word for ‘patience’ (sabr) comes from a root meaning, ‘to confine or contain.’ Turtles with their marvelous shells, literally embody the concept…” How do we live this Lenten season in a way that embodies patience?
She writes about one of the turtle caregivers she meets along the way, and how he has seemed to lean deeper and deeper into the way of the turtle, “living in a different time world than the rest of us. The rest of us humans, that is. At the moment of the world’s most urgent extinction crisis, he radiates calm. Amid a culture of hurry and hunger, he remains contented. He holds, at once, the in-the-moment present and the far-off future, and faces them both with composed persistence. He is living in turtle time.”
As we move along in this season of preparation, slowness, and reflection, let’s keep these questions in front of us: What are we doing? Are we working for that which does not satisfy? Are we spending for that which is not bread?” And when we’re tempted to speed up simply because everything around us says to hurry, let’s remind ourselves that this Lent we’re living in Turtle Time. Slowing ourselves so that we can explore the questions that matter, pursue the life that truly satisfies, use our resources with wisdom and love for the people, land, and creatures among us.
A Slow Practice
Today let’s practice a prayer of reflection. I love these questions Brueggemann offers and I hope you’ll put them in your back pocket and come back to them throughout the remaining twenty-six days of Lent. I hope you’ll come back to this prayer often. These questions are powerful if we let them sink all the way into our cores. If we Turtle Time them!
Lets begin with a few long breaths, accompanied by a breath prayer:
Inhale: I am here
Exhale: Spirit, you are with me
Inhale: I am here
Exhale: Spirit, you are with me
Inhale: I am here
Exhale: Spirit, you are with me
In the wisdom of a turtle, as you reflect on each of these questions, continue to keep your breath slow and deep:
How have I used my time this week? (Give yourself 2-3 minutes to answer this question prayerfully in your mind.) What did I give my time to that matters to me? What did I give my time to that was restorative? What did I give my time to that felt wasteful? What did I give my time to that may look on the outside like it was good, but actually doesn’t satisfy? What did I give my time to that may look on the outside like waste, but was actually a gift to my soul?
Are we working for that which does not satisfy? (Give yourself 2-3 minutes to answer this question prayerfully in your mind.) Take your reflection from above a little further here. What does satisfy you? There is no right answer for this. God has created you in love and you will find meaning and joy in work and play that others may not find meaning and joy in. What satisfies your soul? Why?
Are we spending for that which is not bread? (Give yourself 2-3 minutes to answer this question prayerfully in your mind.) Here’s the hard one. How are we spending our money (and our time)? Are we wasting our resources? Thinking about the way we spend our money is always difficult, and there are never easy answers, but its always powerful to consider what is underneath the way we’re spending our money. Are we living with generosity? Are we purchasing things for our own pleasure while wasting ours and the earth’s resources? Are we giving what we have away to those who don’t share our resources? Are we saving resources for the ones we love, caring for them by planning ahead?
Close with this prayer: Spirit, you who are beyond Turtle Time, teach us to slow ourselves so we can see the bigger story playing out around us. Teach us to live with wisdom. Amen.
A Note:
We’re getting closer and closer to the April release of my new book Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole. You can preorder the book right now at Baker Book House, where it’s 40% off the price of other booksellers. The first 200 preorders over there will receive a signed copy and a super fun temporary “The Lucky Few” tattoo!
I am still putting together both virtual and in-person speaking engagements this spring as I plan my book launch. If your church or community might be interested in hosting my “Embracing Our Limits, Discovering Our Wholeness” workshop, either virtually or in person, reach out at michaboyett@gmail.com. I would love to make it available to you and your people!
If you are a paid subscriber or are thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, this might be the moment to do so! I’m planning a weekly, free virtual book club that I’l be offering my paid subscribers this spring. We’ll be walking through the book together! It’ll be super fun. Sign up to be a paid subscriber here at Slow Waysters.
I have always liked turtles, and now I have yet another reason to enjoy them! Thank you!