Slowing Down

Originally I had thought that I should finish my pre-sabbatical work on Sunday, June 1 and then start walking around New Hampshire on Monday, June 2. I knew that over a year ago I had agreed to do a wedding on June 7, so I wanted to get out there right away and 'get this thing going!' before taking a two day break to come home and do the wedding. I have no idea what got me thinking like that, except that it was really the way I thought about so many things.

And one of the things I should really be working on is slowing down enough to be able to listen. To be with people in the relaxed moments of their lives - over coffee, over a beer. That's where we share our thoughts and our lives. When we're not busy running on to the next thing.

So I decided to try it myself. I'm spending this week simply slowing down. Letting go of the urge to run to the next thing. Sitting with a book. Actually even taking my time doing the laundry (not just fittiting it in somewhere!). Doing what I can to slow down my mind and my soul.

Maybe I'll be better able to listen and be there with this couple getting married, too. They are part of the world I want to listen to this summer. "Spiritual, but not religious." They are getting married at a local Inn, not in a church. But still, they sought out a priest rather than a Justice of the Peace.

I have discovered that weddings are one place, one time, where people seem able and willing to find a way through the barriers that normally keep them away from any connection with 'church.' They struggle to come up with language that describes their deep need to acknowledge and seek out that which is beyond them (the divine) at this most special moment. But it is there. And they call me. And, if they are willing to work with me, beginning to make some exploration of what that divine hunger might mean for them as a couple in their life ahead, I am more than willing to work with them and hopefully make it easier for them to get through those barriers between themselves and a faith community in the future.

So I am moving slower this week. Not walking yet. But hopefully getting prepared to be better at listening . . . to this couple on Saturday who have come to the 'church' with an almost unnamed call out to God . . . and to those that I am walking away from the church to listen to. Who I believe are also calling out to God.