The Slow Way: Time is a Gift of Love

We are not robots set on earth to do enough work in enough time to be deemed good. We are born of love and given an expansive creative gift: time itself.

for the frantic strivers, the serial doers, and the weary achievers

Last Sunday in my church’s youth group we opened up our time for q&a: Ask the youth leaders any questions! I love the questions of teenagers. I love their balance of childlike earnestness and emergent critical thinking. They ask the questions grown ups mostly stopped asking a long time ago when it comes to God. 

One of the questions was one I’ve actually thought a lot about: “If God created the universe what was God even doing before that? If there was no realm to exist in then where was God existing?”

Yes people! Let’s do this. 

I answered with one of my favorite ideas I gleaned from CS Lewis 25 years ago when I first came to Mere Christianity. In it Lewis considers God as a plain—a sheet of paper–-and time as a line drawn on that paper. In other words, God is not bound by time. God is the space in which time begins and ends. Time is God’s creation. So where was God before the beginning of time? Where God has always been…beyond our imaginations. I told the students to consider the reality that the universe is always expanding, making more space. What could exist beyond the universe to make space into? The short answer is nothing. And everything! By which I mean, we can’t comprehend. But if we believe there is a Creator on which time is drawn, then there is a Creator into which the universe grows. God is beyond space and time. And I find so much peace and freedom in that idea.

John Swinton’s book Becoming Friends of Time does the remarkable work of examining how our cultural notions of time are “grasping, utilitarian, instrumental, focused, selfish, and ultimately idolatrous.” And how that view of time is at the heart of ableism (though he doesn’t actually use that word, at least in what I’ve read so far.) He says it this way:

“In a world where productivity and a particular understanding of happiness determine whether someone is deemed worthy of living or dying, people whose lives challenge such ways of being in the world inevitably become vulnerable.” 

I began writing The Slow Way newsletter and podcast because I was struggling to put my finger on what it was about the life of my son (who is autistic and has Down syndrome) that felt truer than the narrative our culture presents all of us who are deemed efficient and able. The world as I’ve encountered it is one gives the most honor to those who can produce, whether that production is entertainment, money, or thought. If we don’t contribute we are weak, lazy, or burdens to our communities. There is a deep realness to Ace’s life that is outside of what our culture says makes us good at being human. In fact, many who argue for the termination of fetuses with Down syndrome do so with an idea that ending the life of the prenatally diagnosed child is for the good of the child, that the lives of those with intellectual disabilities are burdens to our economic, education and family systems, and that being a burden must somehow equal being less worthy of life. Swinton is diving deep into this idea and giving me language I couldn’t find before: When the way we narrate the value of a good life is about productivity, we immediately create a world where those who can’t produce or contribute to the economic machine are considered unworthy of their humanity.

What does that have to do with time? Productivity always has to do with time. There’s a reason we throw around phrases like “time is money.” According to Swinton, if time is a “commodity to be bought and sold rather than a gift to be received,” it will always be valued for how it can be controlled and manipulated. And in that context only those who do the controlling and producing are worthy. Those who aren’t able to participate in the commodity of time will be left behind.  The alternative is to view time as a “a creature born out of God’s love.” When we reimagine time, we also can reimagine ourselves within time. And as we engage with those who live with intellectual disability or brain damage or dementia, our understanding of time also changes. “God’s time is holistic, all embracing, mysterious, and ever present.” God’s time is not a burden of “schedules, deadlines, targets, and competition.” 

This is heady stuff, I know. But it feels so important to all of us who are learning to receive  ourselves, not for what we produce, but for the sake of love. When we release ourselves from the burden of proving our value by what we make of time, we can learn slowness for the sake of our whole selves—our minds, bodies and souls—and for the sake of those in our world who are most vulnerable. But this is spiritual work. If we want to value the lives of those who will never produce enough to be considered good, we have to first value ourselves outside of what we can do.   

“When we begin to understand what it means to reside within God’s time, we are opened up to a whole new way of being in the world, a way that not only respects the difference that disability brings, but in a sense requires it.”

That’s why we need a vision of God that is love, and a vision of all that God has created as born from love. We are not robots set on earth to do enough work in enough time to be deemed good. We are born of love and given a loving, expansive creation: Time is a gift of love. That means we are invited to be whole bodies (not just brains), who are learning what it is to love one another.

Or we are, as Swinson puts it, becoming friends of time. 

A Slow Practice

So how do we practice receiving time as a gift of love? 

Today I think it might be a good first step to think of our day in a way to reaches beyond our typical divisions of times and tasks.

Let’s start with a deep breath:

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

For our prayer today let’s practice a variation of the Examen. Let’s think about yesterday in terms of how you scheduled your day, what you did, what you produced, who you spent time with, what brought you joy, and what brought you anxiety.  You might be able to think of your day as divided into work and rest, eating and sleeping, and hopefully cultivating relationships (caring for yourself and others). Can you skim through yesterday’s schedule in your mind and pay attention to how you spent your morning, afternoon, and evening?

How did you give time to relationships yesterday? Think about the personal emails you might have sent, the engagement online you gave to people you know in real life, phone calls or texts with people you love, lunch dates, walks, or just simple conversations you may have had with your neighbors. 

How did you give time to small tasks that bring you joy? (Maybe you worked on the house, cared for your garden or cooked a meal). 

What time did you give to work? Work can be defined however you want to define it (whether or not it is monetarily profitable). What makes your work productive? How do you feel when you’re producing? How do you feel when you’re not producing? Be curious about those things and sit with the answers. 

What time did you give to rest? Rest could be taking a bath, reading a book, watching Netflix, having a drink with a friend, sitting on the porch with your pup. 

As you categorize these things in your mind, don’t worry about where each thing belongs, just notice how each of those categories — relationships, rest, work, play—feel when you consider them. How do they affect the ways you think about yourself? How do they affect the way you consider yesterday’s value? Was it a good day, why or why not?

How do you determine if a day was good? How do you determine if you are good?

As John Swinton says, time is a creature born out of God’s love. 

Can you scan back in your mind’s eye to yesterday and watch your tasks, your relationships, your moments of rest or play with the perspective of love? 

Spirit, teach me to see all of my day, morning, noon, and night, as good, not because of what I made out of it, but because it was born out of your love. Amen. 

Sit in silence and imagine what it might mean for you to receive the time you’re given as a gift born of Divine love. 

A list of things:

• John Swinton spoke about his book on Amy Julia Becker’s podcast this past June.  If you’re interested in the book, take a listen to this conversation. It’s wonderful.

• The Lucky Few Podcast is gathering Amazon wishlists from any teachers of Special Ed or Inclusive classrooms to share with our listeners, in hopes of those wishlists being met by our podcast community! If you are (or know) a listener who would benefit from getting a few more eyes on their classroom wishlist, send them to this link! 

• This has been a big week for those who are still paying off massive student loans, those of us who know and love people who are paying off student loans, and those of us who worry for our children who are in (or will be) entering the world of college debt. I’m thrilled for Biden’s debt relief package. If you want to know how I feel about it, you can read my tweets. Also, the internet wins for this meme of Dark Brandon pumping iron while confirming his plan with the pope to abolish the protestant work ethic. :)

• I haven’t talked much about the easy, breezy fiction I’ve been reading in a while. My goal this summer has been to not use my brain too much when it comes to fiction, and to listen to audiobooks more than podcasts. My most recent listen was a fun and easy thriller, The Last Thing He Told Me was a lovely companion last week. And it went back and forth between San Francisco and Austin, two of my heart places! (PS Just heard it’s being made into a movie with Jennifer Garner.)