Focus:
Sharing freely what we have been given.
Repetition:
Freely I have received, freely I will give.
My healing is meant to overflow.
I am a vessel of healing for those who come after me.
Slow for Life
Do you remember Weeks Five through Eight, when we first learned to slow down? For many of us, that was one of the hardest parts of this whole protocol. We had been rushing for so long that slowing down felt uncomfortable, even wrong.
Now, after almost two years, many of us are feeling well. We have more energy, we are expanding, and we are saying yes to more of life. This is exactly when we need to be careful. This week is a reminder to stay slow for life.
The Rushing Lifestyle Did Not Give Us Health
Be honest with yourself about how you were living before this protocol. Rushing out the door, eating in the car, scrolling while we ate, filling every hour, and pushing through exhaustion. That way of living did not give us health. It helped create the dysregulated nervous systems, depleted minerals, and wounded guts we have spent two years healing.
When we start to feel good, it is so tempting to fill our calendars back up and pick up the pace again. We do not want to go back to the rushing lifestyle. We want to take the slowness we learned into the rest of our lives.
Learning From the People of Times Past
One of the best ways to remember what a human pace looks like is to watch people who lived it. I do not mean movies. Movies are made to entertain us, and they are cut and edited to keep us excited. I mean documentaries and old recordings of real people working and living in nature.
When you watch these, pay attention to their rhythm. Notice how steady their hands are. Notice that they do not hurry, and yet so much gets done. Notice how they stop to talk with a neighbour, sit for a moment, sing while they work, and let the children work right alongside them. There is no wasted motion and no frantic energy. These were healthy, strong people who moved at the correct pace for a human being. This is the rhythm we want in our own homes.
Some Places to Begin
Here are a few examples to get you started.
Village Life in Spain
Eugenio Monesma is a Spanish filmmaker who has been documenting traditional trades and village life since the 1970s. His films are free on his YouTube channel, “Eugenio Monesma - Documentales,” and many have subtitles in English and other languages. You can watch village women making soap by hand in the Pyrenees, and people making cheese, honey and beeswax, pottery, and so much more. Try searching “Eugenio Monesma soap” to begin.
A Farm Family in France
Farrebique is a 1946 film by Georges Rouquier, made on a farm in the Aveyron region of central France. There are no actors in it. The people are a real farm family and their neighbours, living and working through the four seasons. You will see men working the land and women keeping the home in the rhythm of the seasons.
Old England
British Pathé has put tens of thousands of old films from its archive on YouTube for free. Search “British Pathé” along with words like village, harvest, thatching, blacksmith, or haymaking, and you will find short films of people working with their hands in the countryside.
Old America
Alone in the Wilderness is the story of Dick Proenneke, who retired at fifty and built a log cabin by hand on the shore of Twin Lakes in Alaska in the late 1960s. He filmed himself with a small wind-up camera, and he lived there for over thirty years. Watch how carefully and patiently he works, with only hand tools and his own two hands.
Hand Carved is a film from Appalshop, a media centre in the mountains of Kentucky that has spent decades recording Appalachian life. It follows the chairmaker Chester Cornett as he fells a tree and carves a rocking chair entirely by hand. Appalshop has an archive of films about Appalachian people, their crafts, and their music.
If you love to read, the Foxfire books are another treasure. In 1966, students in Rabun County, Georgia, began interviewing their mountain elders about how they lived, and those interviews became a whole series of books full of old skills, stories, and wisdom.
How to Watch
Do not watch these the way we have learned to watch everything else, in quick bursts while doing three other things. Sit down with a cup of tea. Watch one film, all the way through, without your phone in your hand. Let your breath slow down to match the pace of the people on the screen. When you are finished, go and do one ordinary task in your home at that same pace, washing the dishes, folding the laundry, or kneading dough. Let their rhythm become your rhythm.
Signs We Are Slipping Back Into Rushing
- Eating standing up, in the car, or in front of a screen.
- Saying yes to everything because we finally feel well enough to do it.
- Skipping our time outside because we are “too busy.”
- Feeling that familiar buzz of urgency in the chest.
- Reaching for our phones every time there is a quiet moment.
- Walking fast even when we are not late.
- Losing our sleep rhythm and staying up late to get more done.
If you notice these, do not panic and do not scold yourself. Just gently come back.
Staying Slow for Life
- Do one thing at a time and give it your full attention.
- Walk at a human pace.
- Sit down for every meal and eat with the people you love.
- Leave space in your calendar, and let some days have nothing planned at all.
- Keep the Sabbath as a true day of rest.
- Get outside every day and let the sun, the seasons, and the birds set your pace.
- Keep a time of silence each day.
- Let your children and grandchildren see you living this way, so that they learn it too.
We Do Not Go Back
Our ancestors did not live slowly because they were lazy. They lived slowly because that is the pace at which a human body, a human family, and a human community can thrive. We have worked so hard to heal. Let us protect that healing by refusing to go back to the rushing that made us sick.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)