GO SLOW

It took me a long time to really begin to understand what spiritual gurus mean when they say, "Slow down!" It seemed crazy. How can you get more out of life if you do less? You've only achieved half of what you did in a day before. How can that be success?

Well, part of slowing down is realizing that "success" isn't necessarily measured in quantity. A heavier backpack doesn't mean a better hike. And what IS this success stuff anyhow?

Achieving our fantasies just means spending more effort to create new ones. Plus finding room for, and maintaining, and working with all the ones we've "achieved."

OK, so slowing down . . . Not multi-tasking. Really focusing on one thing, and later, something else. Whaddya know??? Less stress, more relaxation. But, oh my goodness, finding out a lot more about each of those tasks as we go along!

Paying attention takes time. Wonderful things take time to unfold. An empty cup is needed to hold a long drink.

Slowly, in my slower mind, a memory floats up of friends I always had trouble connecting with. Kept feeling we were missing some big stuff...

Bread Garden, Part II

Sowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, milling…what wonderful ancient words and practices!

What we have here is a thought experiment: what would it be like if children actually knew, actually understood in their bones and muscles and imaginations, where their food comes from? Last month’s proposal in this column pictured a schoolyard bread garden and brought it to the point of harvesting the wheat.

Now the children, who have been watching the wheat grow to this point, not exactly amber waves of grain but close enough, get to cut the seed heads. This is reaping, and again something in us knows how to do this. Something deep in our bones and sinew, genes and ancestral memory responds to this from three or four hundred generations back.

Bring the children out on a dry day to snap the seed heads off into buckets...