Anne Marie Miller

Category: Health

  • Are Forgiveness and Reconciliation the Same?

    I never thought there was much difference between reconciliation and forgiveness. In my heart, it all kind of meant the same thing – letting go of pain that someone had inflicted on me. Usually this involved some type of “making up” process involving apologies, sometimes tears, and a hug to make everything alright.

    Twelve years ago, somebody hurt me in a very painful, inexcusable way. For years, I didn’t allow myself to work through the pain as I needed to. A couple of years ago, circumstances (which were mostly out of my control) caused me to stare at this wound square in the face.

    As strange as it sounds, I’ve never doubted that I forgave this person. I feel fortunate that, for the most part, forgiveness comes easy to me. There are probably only two situations in my life where I know I still need to work on forgiving someone, but this particular hurt isn’t one of them.

    However, as I was processing through healing during this time, I began questioning if i really had forgiven this person. Sure, the scabs had been peeled off and the wounds were fresh – and it hurt…badly, all over again.

    Someone who was helping me through this sent me an email. He encouraged me and said that what I was experiencing wasn’t me being bitter or holding on (which was what I was afraid I was doing) but that I was desiring reconciliation.

    I wanted for this person to own up to the mistake and for everything – painful as it would be – to be okay again.

    And I wanted for the relationship to be harmonized and restored completely.

    Later, I read this in a book:

    Joseph was reconciled with his brothers when they came to Egypt in search of grain. By the time his brothers reached Egypt, he was able to stand before them and confront them because he had no inner feelings that would keep him from having a relationship of unity and peace with them.

    Forgiveness is unilateral. You can forgive even if [someone] never admits [their wrong doing], is never sorry, and never changes. But reconciliation requires both people’s commitment to recovery, honesty, repentance, forgiveness, and communication. Even then, reconciliation is a long and difficult process of breaking down barriers and building trust.

    You may not ever be reconciled with a person that hurt you (or that you hurt).

    That part takes both people to work through.

    Forgiveness is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for reconciliation.

    However, forgiveness is a decision that you make, and continue to make, regardless of the other person’s choice.

    And through the cross and grace and love, you can.

  • When God Isn’t…

    Before heading out on this cycling trip, one thing I was curious about was how “God would show up” and I was really excited to “find Him” in different ways.

    Anyway, I thought I had it figured out, this “God showing up” thing. In my fantasy I was leaning head-down into the wind, pathways of sweat cutting across my face and rolling off into the road behind me. I heard the vibration of my bike moving across hot asphalt as blades of grass and insects buzzed next to my feet. My chest moved in and out as my lungs expanded and emptied with each breath. I felt the movement of God in me. I felt alive.

    We’re now on our fourth week of this trip and my God-fantasy is just that. A fantasy. There have been no magic burning bushes or epiphanies had on the open roads. In fact, it’s maybe been the opposite.

    And as expected, the unexpected has happened.

    Physically, the heat and climbing escalated my almost-fixed-but-evidently-not-quite heart problem. That knocks me out from riding every mile on certain days with big climbs or 100 degree plus weather.

    Didn’t see that coming.

    On top of that, the day before two really great rides in Texas, a component of my bike broke to an extent I couldn’t effectively ride. I had planned to do my first century ride into Anson, TX (which is close to where I went to high school) but because I couldn’t get my bike fixed before that day, I ended up driving the van.

    In keeping a healthy perspective, my unplanned time in the van isn’t really a big deal. Before my heart surgery, simply walking to the van would have been tough. So riding 30 miles, 50 miles, 80 miles…any miles, really…is beyond anything I could have hoped for a year ago.

    But my perspective isn’t always healthy.

    I’ve been fighting with my “ideal” self – the athlete I was before my heart problems. I know my muscles are strong and can handle these long miles. Except for the literal pain in the butt from sitting on a six-inch seat for seven hours, nothing really hurts.

    If only my heart worked right, this wouldn’t be such a struggle for me.

    If only…

    The unexpected has thrown my spiritual fantasy out the door as well. And once again, it has to do with my heart.

    What I expected is something emotional. Cathartic. Exciting. Clear. Maybe even miraculous in an obvious way. I’m supposed to be writing another book and planning my future as an author and speaker. I wait each day, hoping for a revelation on what I’m supposed to do when I get back in August and each night go to bed as empty handed as I woke up.

    If only…

    What I am realizing is the extent I let my expectations control me. My heart – both physically and spiritually – had formed expectations for this trip. Expectations that aren’t being met. I’ve spent so much of my spiritual life coasting from a mountain top to a valley and back up again, so I only expect to see God at the top or at the bottom on a roller coaster.

    What happens when there is no roller coaster?

    What happens when the land of my spirit is flat?

    How do I find Him?

    And when I don’t “feel” Him…where do I turn?

    Quite honestly, I find myself turning the other way.

    (Evidently I am not gifted with patience.)

    “What? You’re not here? Okay. Fine. I’m gonna try running over there to find you.”

    I’m left breathless and exhausted at the end.

    My heart…It’s not perfect.

    It beats too fast sometimes.

    It gets anxious.

    It doesn’t like to wait.

    It likes to experience the highs and lows, but never the middle.

    The middle is too quiet. Too tame.

    And as such, too threatening to my comfort.

    In the same way I can’t control how my physical heart functions, I can’t control how God shows Himself, or how I see him.

    What happens when God isn’t a feeling? When He isn’t a high or an adrenaline rush or a moment of clarity when I expect Him to be?

    God simply is, and I need to simply be.

    I need to realize that in that holy moment of simply being, it’s not about my expectations.

    It’s about His.

    Resting.

    Existing.

    Living.

    Being.

    Right here. Right now.

    In this moment.

    With this heart beat.

    And this one.

    And that’s all He wants (and expects) of me.

    —-

  • The True Meaning of Companion (and what it has to do with a Big Mac)

    One final post (although I wish I could do many more!) on the book we’ve been talking about, In Praise of Slowness. This book is so rich in wisdom, in inspiration, and is just so darn well-written (and currently still $6 on Amazon) I seriously can’t recommend it enough. It has done for me what Seth Godin’s work did for me five or six years ago – it adds a “lens” through which I view how I live part of my life out.

    In a chapter on food, we learn that the true meaning of the word “companion” is “sharing bread with someone”…and if you go back and look through the responses of our survey on food, you’ll notice a few people wish to slow down and simply share a meal with family or friends.

    That makes total sense. How often do you hear, “Gosh, I wish that dinner was so much shorter. I hated every minute of the food, the company, the conversation…” Instead, when you have these slower-paced dinners, or even a meal out with friends, the time flies, and you’ve suddenly found yourself at that table for three hours.

    And you want more of that.

    Another large theme was simply eating healthier. Going more local/natural, etc. A common excuse for this is money, and at first glance, sometimes it seems like you pay a lot more going to Whole Foods for a lot less food, than if you went to Wal-Mart (who yes, may carry organic food — but I avoid for other reasons) or Kroger.

    We all know, for the most part, the quality of the Whole Foods-ish products is better, is fair-trade, not made by an eight year old in a sugar field, and more than likely is organic. If you’ve been to a Farmer’s Market, you know some things (meats, pastas, sauces, cheeses) can be a bit pricey.

    So why pay $16/lb for some steak at your Farmer’s Market when you can get it for half that at Wal-Mart?

    The obvious answer is quality. I could literally drive to the farm I get my meat from at the Farmer’s Market and see how it’s made from start to finish. I actually plan on doing this later this summer. If you’ve ever seen Fast Food Nation or Supersize Me (free on Hulu) or The Future of Food (free on Hulu) or any of the other food-advocate type movies, you see the terrible way most food in most supermarkets or chain stores is grown, what pesticides and preservatives are on them, what hidden salts, sugars, syrups, and chemicals they’re laced with, how the animals are given steroids and treated, where your fast food really comes from and what it does, and the way that all of this is disguised to the public.

    I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. But since I have been paying a little more for quality food, it’s amazing how I feel. And I also realize with the amount of eating out I was doing: a $6 bag of Farmer’s Market pasta that will make eight servings is still less than one value meal at Chick-fil-A.

    We don’t mind paying for convenience. That’s the way our culture of busyness has been tricked into thinking healthy things are expensive while we are actually paying so much more for so much less every time we eat out.

    Totally perspective.

    Organic produce, or any produce you can trace back to its origins (and not have to worry if the same chemical they use to make Agent Orange is the pesticide they sprayed on your lettuce) is fairly inexpensive. Buy a few tomatoes, add some herbs, simmer them up, and all of the sudden you have fresh, organic tomato sauce for $2-3 instead of paying $6-12 for the organic kind in a jar. That’s just one example of something you can make that’s less expensive, and better for you, than getting something in a bright colored jar.

    I have decided to stick to the following rules when it comes to food. Exceptions are always made. Nobody can pull this off perfectly, but the exceptions to the rules are few and far between.

    • Know where the food came from
    • Read the ingredients
    • Craving XYZ restaurant? How can we make this at home for less?
    • PLAN AHEAD and shop according to that plan
    • Just stay away from the processed stuff.
    • Buy local when possible (especially produce and meat!)
    • If at all possible, use the oven or stove and not the microwave, even though it takes longer.

    Cooking takes time. And energy. And some days you don’t have that energy. But what can be adjusted in your schedule so you have an hour set aside to cook? Or can you spend a couple hours one night, or on a weekend cooking ahead of time so you have something healthy already to go on the days when life is crazy.

    The affordability issue — for most people — ourselves included — is a priority thing. A family will typically spend more money on entertainment or things like cell phone bills than they do on food. Buying cheap food now may seem like the answer, but with all those strange chemicals racing around in our bodies, it won’t be the answer in the long run when someone has to get treated for obesity related diseases, or because of all the chemicals we’ve slowly been ingesting.

    It’s important to think about the long-term effects this will have on us, our children (who have a shorter life-expectancy than we do…!) instead of the short-term fix of a quick meal in front of the TV before we rush off to doing something that in reality, may not be as important that sharing healthy food, and celebrating that element of creation and nature, with the people we’ve been given in life.

  • I Could NEVER do That!

    “I could never do what you’re doing!” I told a guy named Cody at a church in Dallas. I was speaking there and he had just cycled in with the Ride:Well team, a group of fifteen or so people who were biking across the country.

    Rattling off a list of reasons (including a very legit heart issue) he told me to one, get my heart fixed…and two, do the ride.

    So last summer I made the vow. If I could get my heart fixed, I’d do it.

    And my heart got fixed.

    And I signed up for the ride.

    We begin the ride across the country for Blood:Water Mission on June 6, but as part of my training, Thursday I, along with two other cyclists will be riding 100 miles (also known as a century ride).

    They’ve done it before. In fact, one of them just rode 165 miles a few weekends ago.

    I’ve only gone 50 miles. Once.

    Most of my rides are 15-25 miles long. I think I had a 36 miler in there too.

    But 100?

    I twittered about it Wednesday and had so many people say, “I could NEVER do that!”

    Yeah – me too! I’m still thinking this is a crazy idea!

    But here’s the deal.

    I CAN.

    YOU CAN.

    If me, a non-athletic, pasty white, nerd-author girl can ride a bike 100 miles, so can you.

    Or maybe it’s not cycling, but there’s something you’ve been putting off.

    But you need to do it.

    You have a choice – say YES to the unknown, the scary, the uncomfortable, the exhilarating, the embarrassing, and you will be saying YES to an adventure you could never in a million years dream up.

    So, you may not be riding 100 miles today (in 90* weather, with 60% humidity — not that I’m paying attention to my Weather App…) but in solidarity, would you do SOMETHING a little out of the norm today?

    If you’d like to see where we’re riding, you can click here.

    If you want to donate to our ride (the money doesn’t go TO us, it goes to support Blood:Water mission) you can click here.

    And for the love, tell us what’s one crazy thing you want to do, or one crazy thing you’re going to do today!

    I’ll be back as quickly as possible to continue the series on slowness and let you know how the ride went! You can follow my Twitter here to know the latest!

  • Quick Survey: FOOD

    If there is one thing you could change about your relationship with food, what would it be?

    Would it be what you ate?

    What you didn’t eat?

    How much or how little you eat?

    Where you eat?

    How fast you eat?

    Where the stuff you eat comes from?

    Who you eat it with?

    Or…..(you fill in the blank)…

    For me, I wish I would eat more regularly instead of at random times. I also wish I could say no to chocolate at times. Or pasta. And I’m trying to eat more locally and once we get back from our trip, plant some herbs. (Until then, we steal from our neighbors – they know.) Fast food really isn’t a big problem for me because I’ve watched enough documentaries on it that it just grosses me out. But sometimes in airports, it’s the only thing around.

    So…go. What would you change?

  • Time? What Time? That’s HILARIOUS! Hahahaha.

    In case you’re new around these parts, I wrote a book called Mad Church Disease that came out last year. It’s about how I literally burned out while working at a church because I didn’t know how to manage my time or my stress.

    I ended up in the hospital for a week as my body just…inflamed…itself. I was having panic attacks, was unable to treat my depression adequately, had withdrawn from relationships and at the center of it, left no time for spiritual connection or growth.

    It has been five years since that burnout, and slowly and clumsily I’ve been trying to be a better steward of my time and resources. I fail often, but when I do, it’s with gusto.

    Many people place their priorities in a hierarchical manner. Like:

    1. God/Faith
    2. Spouse/Partner
    3. Children
    4. Extended Family
    5. Career
    6. Leisure/Friends

    Remember last week when we talked about how time in developed countries is linear? This is a prime example of how we try to work in items onto our timeline based on priority.

    Let’s be real with each other for a moment.

    Life is crazy and more often than not, if we look at this list of priorities they often fall out of line.

    Career comes first for many of us, even if it’s not our intent. We combine things as well, like family and leisure (think weekend baseball games, recitals, etc.) or faith and career (say, if you work in a church).

    These things get all jumbled up. Because we can’t make sense of them anymore, it’s difficult to put them in our linear timelines. We get stressed out, frazzled, and rushed, and just throw things where they randomly fit.

    Instead of viewing these parts of our life in a hierarchy, what if we viewed them cyclically?

    Let’s compare this to a bicycle.

    Most of us would agree that faith is the most important part of our lives, so imagine that as the middle – the axle. If our spiritual life stays healthy and strong, the other things – the spokes – are able to function in harmony and move us forward.

    When you ride a bike, you don’t check off each rotation of the wheel like a to-do list. You simply arrive at your destination.

    If the axle on my bike is damaged in some way, the spokes don’t carry the weight properly, which causes the tire to bend, which will then send me flying over the handlebars. Or the frame may come loose off the axle. Either way…

    Crash.

    Sometimes a spoke gets messed up. Sometimes things in our lives don’t go as planned. But when that happens, you don’t crash. You can ride cautiously until you get it fixed. Or you can even walk your bike to where you’re going. It’s not ideal.

    But it’s not a crash.

    While this post doesn’t come directly out of the book we’ve been studying the last week (In Praise of Slowness), I think in order to get to the root of our stress and feeling rushed we need to take a look at how we spend our time.

    How do you view time and priorities? Linearly or cyclically? Are you moving forward, or do you feel stuck? Is everything rotating around what’s most important in your life or are you wondering where all the time went?

  • A Season for Everything, Just Do It Faster…

    I love how Chapter 1 in In Praise of Slowness begins.

    “What’s the very first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?”

    The answer: We look at the clock.

    For me, it just so happens that my clock is also my alarm is also my phone is also my email checker is also my Twitter checker is also my blog checker and my Google Reader and…

    Before I even get out of bed, I’m caught up on what’s happened in my little world in the last six to eight hours.

    That’s right.

    MY little world.

    One could argue I am simply checking in on connections and relationships.

    But honestly, I’m just trying to find my first fix of affirmation for the day.

    (FIRST fix. AHEM. More on that in a moment.)

    In some philosophies, we learn from Honoré that time is considered cyclical. It’s renewing. Coming…going…it’s about seasons. Before there were things like clocks or time was measured as intricately as it is today, people ate when they were hungry and slept when they were tired.

    In most of our developed countries, time is considered linear. There is a Point A (now) and a Point B (end) and we want to accomplish as much as possible between the two. We take chunks of activities (eating, sleeping, TV, work, community, sex, reading, shopping, consuming, etc.) and try and fit as many chunks as we can into these pre-determined amount of time.

    So we feel rushed. We feel there’s never enough time to do everything.

    (Hey, that’s because there *isn’t* enough time to do everything).

    With improvements in technology over past centuries, we’ve been able to save time. It is going to take me two months to cycle across the country this summer. In a plane, I could knock that out in six hours.

    If we let technology run the show, we don’t save time — we just end up with a different set of things to do. The amount of work hardly changes, if it changes at all.

    This chapter, titled Do Everything Faster, ends with a very poignant quote from Mark Kingwell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.

    “Despite what people think, the discussion about speed is never really about the current state of technology. It goes much deeper than that, it goes back to the human desire for transcendence.”

    And that takes me back to my early morning affirmation/phone/clock check.

    I know one day I’m going to die.

    I’d like to hope that what I’m doing is making a difference.

    Even though I’m not on this earth to make people happy, my morning “routine” is an (inaccurate) way I measure my value.

    Sometimes things need to be done fast. When I was on a bike ride with a friend last week, a severe thunderstorm was approaching us. We needed to stop smelling the honeysuckle on the Natchez Trace and find shelter. When we need to travel quickly to reach family members in a crisis, we can. Some cancers can’t be treated slowly. You get my point.

    However, instead of viewing time as a line with a start and a finish, I’m going to try and see my life and purpose in seasons. Some fast. Some slow. Some stressed. Some refreshing. Some aggressive. Some passive. Some giving. Some receiving.

    By intentionally doing this, there is no Point A in my linear time line of life and purpose that begins each morning.

    Instead, every morning is a step into a season.

    …A season lived in truth to whatever I happen to be doing at the time.

    …A season to be embraced and experienced fully.

    Not rushed. Not hurried. And not afraid of the end.

    (Because there is no end…just a season for leaving this physical life behind…)

  • Speed Praying

    Tomorrow we’ll begin to discuss some more of In Praise of Slowness‘s content, but I am so grateful Carl has taken part in these conversations. Below are some more thoughts from Carl (he left them in the comment section in yesterday’s post) on the church’s responsibility of taking on this movement of slow. I’ll offer some thoughts after his notes.

    From Carl:

    I think the church can spearhead the move to slow down. And by ‘church” I mean both ministers and congregations. After all, every religion has slowness at its core.

    The idea of a Sabbath, of setting aside time to rest, reflect and reconnect with the self, with others and with God, is common across all faiths. It’s spelled out in black in white in the Bible: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

    The problem is that the church has been infected by the same virus of hurry that has accelerated the rest of our culture.

    Last year, I gave a talk in the chambers beneath St. Peter’s church in Vienna, Austria. It was the first time the crypt had been used for a secular event in nearly a thousand years. With the dim lighting, ancient altarpieces and faint whiff of incense, and with the stone walls blocking out all mobile phone reception, it was the perfect setting for an evening devoted to Slow. My hosts were a group of high-flying businesspeople but the monsignor in charge of the church was there, too. I felt a bit uneasy seeing him in the front row, but in the end he laughed along at my more risqué jokes. Afterwards, he came up to me with a confession. “You know, as I was listening to you, I suddenly realized how easy it is to do things in the wrong way,” he said.

    “Lately I have been praying too fast.”

    I live in England (my father-in-law is a retired vicar) and see the same problem in the church here: ministers forced to serve multiple parishes, dashing between congregations, grappling with red tape, spread so thinly that they struggle to minister properly and hover permanently on the edge of burnout. These days, we already have Speed Yoga and Drive-Thru Art Exhibitions. Maybe Speed Praying will be next.

    There is a serious point here.

    How can someone stuck in roadrunner mode preach the wisdom of slowness? The answer is they can’t.

    It’s like Wall Street bankers singing the praises of salary restraint. Or Tiger Woods promoting monogamy. It doesn’t wash.

    As Gandhi said, you must be the change you wish to see in the world.

    The church is uniquely equipped to make the case for slowness.

    But it must put its own house in order first.

    It has to practice what it preaches…

    —–

    Anne’s Thoughts:

    I know religion often screams at us to hurry because “souls are dying” and “ministry is 24/7” and “we have to keep up!” I get it. I lived in that world for a long time. One of the examples Carl uses in his book is the classic race between the tortoise and the hare. I think we all know the outcome of that.

    Yesterday, I also watched Carl’s TED talk, which someone had recommended. He talks about several European countries who have intentionally embraced the idea of appropriate slowness in the workplace. Not only are they healthier and more well-rounded people, the quality of their work exceeds the quality of work in nations who spend up to twice as many hours working a week.

    The bottom line with taking on a slower, more intentional pace in faith, I believe, is this:

    Who are we relying on?

    Are we relying on the power within ourselves to accomplish the work in the world that we believe needs to happen? Or are we relying on our faith, and the power of community to do it?

  • A Personal Note to You from Carl Honoré, The Author of “In Praise of Slowness”

    Carl Honoré
    Carl Honoré

    Hi Anne,

    Thanks for providing such a thoughtful arena for the ideas in In Praise of Slowness. This feels like the beginning of an urgent and beautiful conversation.

    I’d like to inject a note of optimism. In this roadrunner world, it can sometimes feel like there is no option but to follow the hurrying herd. But there is.

    Everywhere you look nowadays, more and more people are waking up to the folly of living in fast-forward and discovering that by slowing down judiciously they do everything better and enjoy everything more; they live happier, healthier and richer lives; they are grow more connected to themselves and to others.

    When I first began researching In Praise of Slowness, the search term “slow movement” turned up nothing on Google. There was Slow Food and Citta Slow but that was about it. Today you get a half million entries on Google under “slow movement” in English.

    I know these are big words, but I think we are on the cusp of a cultural revolution. Slow is not some shallow fashion trend, here today, gone tomorrow. We are lurching towards an historical turning point, a moment when the tectonic plates are beginning to shift below the surface.

    For at least 150 years everything has been getting faster – and for the most part speed was probably doing us more good than harm in that time. But in recent years we’ve entered the phase of diminishing returns – today speed is doing us more harm than good. This turbo-charged culture is taking a toll on our health, diet and work, our communities, relationships and the environment.

    The case for slowing down is so powerful today that it’s no longer just yoga teachers, aromatherapists and church ministers making it; it’s business too. The corporate world is starting to realize that too much speed and hurry hurts the bottom line; it erodes productivity, hampers creativity and leads to more mistakes. And look what happened recently to the global financial system. Things got so rushed in the markets that no one had the time or the incentive to lift up the hood and ask if the engine was overheating, to pull apart those collaterized debt obligations and credit default swaps to work out whether they were worth the paper they were written on. The whole system was based on fast growth, fast consumption and fast profits – and look how it nearly tipped us into a total economic meltdown.

    There is still a very long way to go to win over the corporate world to the virtues of slowness, but there are encouraging signs. A senior manager at IBM has even launched a “slow email” movement, urging people to unplug and make the most of email (and life) by using email less. And that’s IBM, not a meditation school. The need for slowness is being discussed everywhere from the boardroom to the bedroom.

    Let me finish by reiterating what Anne said in her post: the Slow philosophy is NOT about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, and sometimes not doing anything at all. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. Building deep and meaningful connections with people, the spirit, culture and the land. It’s about quality over quantity.

    Perhaps Mae West put it best when she said: “Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”

    Lookiong forward to seeing where this conversation leads us….

    —

    Carl Honoré dropped by the blog last night and shared a few words with us. Thanks, Carl, for taking the time to engage into our little discussion!

    I love that he reiterates a very positive, very doable point of view as most of us have expressed some sort of anxiety of “there’s-no-way-I-can-slow-down-my-life-is-a-mad-house!”

    I know I have several steps we are taking to be intentional about slowing down, some we even began this week. But I live life spending a minimum of 100 days on the road. How do you not hurry or grab a bite to eat in-between flights or avoid the microwaved eggs at hotels when you’re traveling?

    What I do think is interesting is both in the book and in his comment, he mentions that “slow” is often a pace set for church ministers. Since most people reading this blog are involved in some type of leadership role or staff position at a church, I can see how we are actually just now moving into the “fast” mode, and the statistics prove it. A higher percent of ministers are generally more overweight than the national average. Close to 2000 ministers leave their posts every month. The average length of stay at a church position is 18 months. More and more ministers are coping with escapism to deal with the stress. A large number (72-78% depending on where you get your stats from) don’t believe they have a close friend.

    I personally ended up in the hospital almost five years ago because I had no idea how to manage my schedule or my stress. The cult of speed caught up with me in a significant way.

    This is an epidemic within our stained-glass walls as well.

    Those of us who have spent time inside the church or within religious circles know how damaging the pace has been increasing. He mentions how the Slow Movement has been gaining ground over recent years, so what if we helped lead this movement within our own circle of influence?

    I’d love to hear your thoughts.