Move Slow to Feed Your Body
For everything there is a season, a time to rest and a time to move, a time to be swift and a time to drift, a time to speed up and a time to…s l o w d o w n.
The Slow Movement grew out of the Slow Food Movement. Slow food is a response to fast food. Slow food is taking time to prepare and eat healthy food that is grown locally.
The Slow Movement focuses on connection to people and place, connection to your own life. Life can be fast paced and stressful. Slowing down you can become aware of your life while you are living it.Last week in our service To Feed Your Soul, we included the words of 14th century Sufi poet Hafiz—
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes…
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
That hard, cramped, stressed, fault-finding, ripping apart way isn’t good for any body or any cause.
In the most recent issue of the UU World magazine, an article named that Unitarian Universalists are often idealist and activists.
Activists can sometimes be tempted to overwork and get stressed out.
Social activist, Catholic monk, religious writer, student of Zen Buddhism Thomas Merton wrote,
“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist... most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by the multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence... It destroys the fruitfulness of one's own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
I know how busy I can get. I’m rushing and trying to move things along. My face hardens, my upper lip tightens.
My throat, neck and shoulders tense.
I can speak defensively and the volume grows.
Me, too, and things escalate.
If we slow down and decide to take a couple of minutes for each of us to speak with the other listening, without interrupting, we calm down. We know each of us will get a chance to speak. As we listen, we can hear the feelings behind the strong minds.
Slowing down brings me balance. Then I can respond and do the work that needs to be done.
Then you loosen up your face softens, your sweet muscles relax, and the look that appears in your eyes delights children.
You don’t listen so much for faults and things to criticize as you listen and look with an open heart. You hear to increase the odds on connection; you look to increase the odds on love.
Take a drink of refreshing water and let the glass of yourself fill up.
It’s like taking a deep breath.
It’s a rhythm to your week that breaks the routine and brings you here. Just being here brings a kind of healing and wholeness.
It’s a reminder to take in the blessings of your life.
It moves you from isolation and loneliness into community.
It’s quietly connecting to your inner wisdom.
Slowing down isn’t just good for your body. It’s good for the body of us, for the body of the earth. An old Japanese phrase “Shindo-fuji” literally translated means body and earth are not two.
Balance brings intention and attention. You can connect with people and that relationship itself is healing. Fruitfulness comes to your work.
Balance allows for times of playfulness and joy. Skida ma rink a dinky dink Skida ma rink a doo.
There’s so much going on in the world. On just one night this week of the PBS Newshour, they covered doom and despair in South Africa, the gloom of the economy, death and destruction in America’s longest war, the war in Afghanistan. Along with all that news, we witnessed oil covered pelicans in this worst of environmental crises in the Gulf. That’s a lot.
The challenges before us need us to be fit to respond. Anyone, who has been a long term caregiver for a loved one, knows you have to take care of yourself to take care of another. You have to balance your life for the long haul to do the good work you have to do. Otherwise you get drained. You get depleted. You have to keep your glass full.
Greg Mortenson promotes peace and builds schools in Pakistan. He writes of a village elder. “Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.”
This year a group of members have been meeting to support one another in Going Deeper as Unitarian Universalists. This group is open to all who give generously and participate regularly.
People create their own personal covenants on consumption of food and fuel, on how to give to the world and take care of themselves.
Practices to support our bodies, minds, and spirits have been:
eat more vegetables,
walk,
meditate,
do something for the church,
do something for the larger community,
be generous,
say Thank you,
greet people.
At meetings of the group, people hear each other’s personal intentions and people are accountable to one another.
These good folks have responded to needs as they have come up and found joy in giving more of their money and more of their attention to people and projects. They are inspiring.
Today we hear from two members.
Kay: In our Going Deeper group, we are focusing on living our values. For some it means a conscious way of eating. For others it means volunteering to serve the larger community.
For me it means accepting that I am not a marcher, a petitioner, or a letter writer. Others in the group are, and I cheer them.
It means realizing that I live my values face to face, one on one.
I sit with my friend of 35 years who is dying of cancer. I pay her bills, wash her clothes, pick up her prescriptions, and provide a shoulder to cry on—both for her and her son, who is overwhelmed with the enormity of his sadness, grief, and sometimes frustration. I remember the joy and laughter we have shared for these many years.
I clean up after a reception, donate a housecleaning, and deliver a meal to my friend who lost his 16-year-old son in a car accident.
In our Going Deeper group, people have responded when they’ve heard of needs at the church. So I write cards on behalf of our congregation’s Appreciation Circle. When I heard the church’s Caring Circle needed more members, I joined. Now I look out for those brought to the attention of the Caring Circle.
I have coffee with my new friend who is suffering from depression.
I have just signed up on Lotsa Helping Hands to help provide care for a family in this congregation.
We are all so busy these days. I have the luxury of being retired; how I spend my time is mostly my decision. To nourish myself, I take time to read, to cuddle with my cats, to write. As I gather my strength, I have more to share with the people in my life, in my community. In going deeper, I’ve realized that relationships are what matter to me.
Ralph: I will!
Verbalizing these two words creates much potential for positive change. Verbalizing them while looking someone square in the eyes creates unlimited potential for positive change.
I will meditate three times per week.
I will be friendlier to the people that I see during my day.
I will exercise at least three times per week.
I have made these statements in our Growing Deeper group here at church – while looking someone square in the eyes! This practice is very powerful and helpful to me.
After saying, “I will meditate”, I did so, for one month and then slowed down. So, let me say to all of you here today, “I will meditate at least three times per week”. Thank you all for being an extension of my Growing Deeper group.
After saying, “I will be friendlier,” Julie and I had a fabulous conversation with the clerk at the Berkeley library. We talked about how in one moment we’re meeting our job responsibilities and in the next moment we’re jumping on trampolines with kids. She told us about her 105 year-old auntie who has survived 5 husbands and still has tremendous spirit and spunk.
After saying, “I will exercise”, I’ve been walking 4 or 5 times per week for more than two months. I’m now experiencing the feeling of, “Oh! That’s how my legs are supposed to work.”
In Growing Deeper we reflect on such phrases as, “Believe in yourself and be gentle with yourself”. We work to deepen as Unitarian Universalists. We also talk about and support one another in our consumption, spiritual practices, and living our values.
The group has supported me in my change to a raw vegan diet. I used to have headaches that felt like ten thousand sledgehammers pounding the inside of my skull with every heartbeat. My headaches are almost completely gone because of eating raw vegan and exercising regularly. I deeply appreciate my friends in Growing Deeper for helping me with this.
I have found that the best way to have warm and loving relationships with people is to be humble and vulnerable.
I am able to be humble and vulnerable in my Growing Deeper group and in this beautiful church. Thank you, so much.
Move Slow: To Feed Your Body from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.
Copyright © 2010, Revs. Bill and Barbara Hamilton-Holway, All Rights Reserved
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