The ethics of slowing down
Dear Ones,
You are vast. You are spacious. You are music & laughter. Be so. As you can. Be so. Ready?
Over the summer I heard about an ethics research project. Princeton Seminary theology students were taught about the Good Samaritan story Fromm the Bible and given the assignment to write their own sermon on the parable to deliver to classmates. In simplified form, a traveler from Samaria encounters a stranger in distress beside a road, stops to help them up, and finds them a room at a local inn. The students are to write their own sermon on this topic.
The day they are to present, they are to leave their classroom and go to the lecture hall in three groups. The first group is told they are 5 minutes late, the next group is on time, the last told they have 5 extra minutes. On the path to the lecture hall is a stranger, staged to be in obvious distress. The experiment was to note how time constraints affected ethical predispositions; what happens to our ability to see and assist each other when we are hurried. Most of the students who were told they were late reported they didn't see a stranger and didn't stop on the way. Those who were on time reported seeing the stranger but went past to arrive on time to the lecture hall. But those who were early, who had 5 extra minutes, over half of them stopped to see what was wrong.
This knocks me down every time I think of it because I can FEEL it in my home. I can feel how my half of the partnership wanes when I get 'busy'. I put it in quotes here to remind myself that it is a choice not a truth. I have often thought that running 5 minutes late only affects me and the appointment to which I'm headed. But this points out that my five minutes late affects my ability to see, to act, to help. This is not the character I would like to share with the world. And yet it happens.
Retreat is a chance to let the momentum of my day-to-day life slow, to allow myself to be cared for with great meals, great movement, great great big skies. I adopt a different pace. The little box of my assumptions and plans can loosen and allow in a breeze, the stars, and a perspective that I had forgotten - who I am here to be.
This is Magic Time.
So we will arrive and decompress. The first practices will be playful, helping to ease us out of the intensity and seriousness we can cultivate around Getting It Done and start to redefine Getting it Done Right. Later practices will become caring and replenishing, and then releasing, and then rebuilding. We will walk, lots of time for yourself, a great local chef will have us in her care. A different structure to our outer days invites a different structure inside.
When we feel full and tended, our generosity arrives.
Magic Time is something we inhabit and remember. iIt is something that is shared with us, and then something that fortifies our ability to share what we are here to do, to be. and this is the work we all seek.
“When we are involved in a task so fully that we lose track of time, that is when we are at our most God-like, immortal, outside of time.” - Stephen Mitchell
If you want more details, if you have questions, if you are undecided and want to talk it out, for these reasons and for more, I am here for a conversation if you like. Reply to this email and set up a time to talk to me. Maybe you've never gone on retreat and it feels intimidating. Let's talk. Maybe you've been on retreat but this seems different. Let's talk. I'm not here to sell you, I'm here to help answer questions and listen and be sure this fits for where you are and what you want.
Like nearly every teacher, I'm teaching what I need. I feel hurried. I feel busy nearly all the time. It feels as though my days are set on ‘gallop’. And so the chance to set time aside and reboot is important and I am going on retreat to reset to ‘walk’ for a while.
"Everything that's stuck gets better when you unplug it for 5 minutes, and that includes us." - Anne Lamott
If you would like to try a smaller version, a one evening-one day-one morning home immersion, try out this weekend with me. Details + registration.
Check your schedule. Check your heart. Check your pace. Check out the website. Set up a call with me.
Most of all, choose your pace with deliberation, and see who’s around you, what’s around you, what’s within you that requires attention. Slow down so your generosity can bloom again. I will.
I am ready to see what’s around me and how I can help.
All love, Martha
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Retreat details here.
Home immersion here. This Friday PM, Saturday AM +PM, Sunday AM.
I will have free morning classes live on Zoom + YouTube MWF 8-9:30am Oct 16 - Nov 10.
Vinyasa for 50 minutes, breath for 10 minutes, and meditation for 15 minutes.
Leave when you need to. Zoom link will be on the front page of my website. Door’s open xx
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