“Hurry is an unpleasant thing in itself, but also very unpleasant for whoever is around it. Some people came into my room and rushed in and rushed out and even when they were there they were not there – they were in the moment ahead or the moment behind. Some people who came in just for a moment were all there, completely in that moment…..I do not think it is lack of time that keeps me from doing things, it is that I do not want enough to do them.”
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Bring Me a Unicorn

I have not read this book of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s though one of her books, A Gift From the Sea, is one I have re-read so many times it is marked and dog-eared nearly making it unreadable. But today I ran across this quote and it was so confronting that I have thought about it all day. I copied it down so I could carry it with me allowing its message to be like a large stone I pushed up a hill or carried around my neck.

My middle name could be ‘Hurry’ though I wish it weren’t so. It has lessened over the years but this way of ‘rushing in’ and ‘rushing out’ of a room, a conversation, an experience still has its way with me, mostly against my will. If truth be told one of the few regrets I have had as a parent is that, when my children were little, I hurried too much. Hurried myself. Hurried them. Hurried our life. I am eternally sorry for this and just pray that they do not remember it with too much of a heavy heart.

Most of the time, I believe, our hurrying is for noble reasons: We take on more than we ought. We want to give more of ourselves than is possible. We can’t decide between the best of whatever the world is offering up at the moment. Our sense of obligation overwhelms us and we fill our cup with all that need be done for others and for the hurts and needs of the world. And so we hurry. From this moment to the next. From this day to tomorrow. From this year, barreling into the future that is not yet ready for us.

There are people, of course, who do not hurry. I know some of them and I almost always feel safe and at home in their presence. They are the ones who look at you, really look at you and seem to know you fully. They are the ones who give you in the impression that they do not want to be anywhere else except where they are. This kind of presence to another person can only be described as blessing. When we are in such an unhurried moment we feel and deeply know the movement of the Sacred in the space that exists around and between and in what we name as time. The space of that place and that time seems to expand making room for the More.

In addition to unhurried people there are places that, by their very nature, refuse to allow us to hurry. The rhythms they offer up seem to actually cause our blood pressure to balance and slow, our hearts and minds to go to some place of original blessing. These places are often away from the freeways and city expectations of hurry. Many involve water….lakes, rivers, streams…..that seem to remind us of some primal need to stop, rest, stay put. Jesus knew this and was often calling his friends to a lakeshore or seaside to lure them into a unhurried time in which they could remember who and whose they were.

Nearly every day it can seem that the world is pushing in on us, urging us to hurry. But in these autumn days, whose lesson is letting go, perhaps we can slow down and look at the beauty around us. Notice the color that will so soon be gone. Look at the face of that child who will soon be grown. Savor this day that will never be again.

It will be a blessing. For us. And for the world.