The Slow Lane

Trail marker, Ghost Ranch

I've been called something I've never been called before: a slow person. I was in line at the grocery store, and the man in front of me had a form to fill out; that took some time. My transaction was a bit complicated, too. As I was picking up my bags I heard the cashier ask the man behind me how he was. "Not so good," he said. "There are all these slow people in front me!"

I almost laughed out loud. Back in college I used to say, "The fast lane is not for me." Yet in many ways the fast lane is exactly where I've lived.

True confession: years ago, before I got married and had kids, I racked up three speeding tickets in one year. As a result I received a harsh note from the DMV telling me that I was "a danger to yourself and others." DMV required my presence at a special session for people like me. The room was full of the broadest cross-section of society I have ever been privy to in terms of age, ethnicity and profession. All of us traveling in the fast lane, a danger to ourselves and those around us.

The officer leading the session presented us with terrifying facts about highway fatalities. As we silently absorbed the information, the truth of the letter we had received began to sink in. But what I recall more than anything is the officer's fury at the people he pulled over who, when he asked them how fast they thought they were driving, simply said, "I don't know."

"You have to know how fast you're going!," he shouted at us.

I've thought about that statement often. I keep a much more careful eye on my speedometer now, but I don't always keep an eye on my other movements through the day. I often speed from one task or thought to another, hardly taking a breath, completely unaware of how fast I'm going.

"To move slowly and deliberately through the world, attending to one thing at a time, strikes us as radically subversive,  even un-American," says Belden Lane. "That is our poverty." We are, perhaps, inspired by the story of the naturalist Louis Agassiz who said he spent one summer traveling--only to get half-way across his back yard.  But we could never imagine moving that slowly ourselves.

Yet as I've experimented with moving slightly more slowly over these past few months I find myself actually enjoying it. I identify with other slow people and I have more patience for anyone who can't get around too quickly.  The slow lane is not as boring as I feared. In fact, it has a lot to offer.

The fast part of me isn't gone. I can hear my own voice in the voice of the impatient man at the grocery store. I used to be impatient with slow people and sometimes I still am. I used to be impatient with myself and sometimes I still am.

My shadow on the labyrinth,
St. Francis Cathedral Basilica, Santa Fe

But I'm developing a greater appreciation for the wisdom of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who advised us to cultivate a patient trust in ourselves and in the slow work of God.  We are impatient in everything to reach the end without delay, he said. The intermediate stages are essential, however. The key is not to force anything but to trust that our own ideas will mature over time, through circumstance and grace. And to trust that in the process God's hand is slowly forming a new spirit within us.

It's slow going, but I'm starting to trust.