Several years ago, back when I was a runner, I would take laps around a beautiful pond—only I didn’t really take much stock of its beauty because I was running, and the goal wasn’t really to pause for anything.
Now I go for walks with my children around the same pond, and it looks much different. We take short pauses on the benches before we continue meandering around the pond. Taking our pause, we’ve noticed tiny caterpillars making their way across the sidewalk. We’ve heard the trill of red wing blackbirds. We’ve noticed coneflowers and sunflowers and cat tails.
Pauses are not stops or interruptions, but rather a deliberate rest from activity to give something else priority. Usually this something else is calling us to take precedence over what we are doing.
For most of this summer, I’ve read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It’s one of just a few books that I’ve encountered that I just cannot read quickly. While it is an encouraging challenge to try to read as much as possible and to see so many friends completing their book lists, I wonder if we can find value in digesting some books slowly (very slowly). Should we even be more deliberate about finding books that demand to be read slowly?
Back to Dillard. I found myself reading a line, and then I would pause—not sure I understood what I just read. I’d read it again. Then I’d read another line and wonder. Sometimes I’d read a line and write it down in a small notebook to remember. Sometimes I just needed to stop and look up a word she used. Comber. Chitin. Pentimenti.
In her chapter on Spring, she grapples with beauty: “Beauty itself is the language to which we have no key; it is the mute cipher, the cryptogram, the uncracked, unbroken code.” What do I think of the idea that beauty is a language in which we have no key? There is a sense of mystery to what she herself communicates to her reader. I’m not sure I always understand exactly what she is writing, but it always invites re-reading and re-thinking.
Poetry and poetic thinking also slow us down. As E. B. White once put it, “A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer … He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.” Poetry honors our time by not rushing us forward, but rather keeps us in one place for a bit longer, asking us to look in other directions—behind (our memories), aside (who and what surrounds us), and upward (toward God).
Pause helps us to pattern our ways of thinking and creating after something slower. I noticed I read in shorter but deeper bursts. I had a small notebook where I handwrote my notes. In an age where information is overwhelming, this helps us hone our discernment ability—to see and notice what needs to be seen at a particular moment. I didn’t get through a momentous book list this summer. I almost finished Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and I’m grateful for that. Likewise, our loops around the pond were slow, but we always finish the loop and leave with many gifts.
To Ponder
1. When do you welcome pauses, and when do you resist them?
2. What books have invited you into “slow reading”?
Articles + what I’ve been up to
My piece for Anselm Society explores Marilynne Robinson, the Prodigal Son, and the literary imagination.
How can stories like this one lead us to practice Christian love in the real world? How can stories engage us in the human experience and help us to grow in love? The answer is the literary imagination. When literature invites us into the interior lives of others, we as readers begin to imagine the value of those lives. As our literary imagination expands, that same imaginative value placed on these characters sooner or later becomes a capacity we take into our embodied love in the world.
At Catholic Women in Business, I recently wrote about finding peace while working from home with children.
At Fiat Self-Publishing Academy, I will be leading a nonfiction group writing session in September. While the enrollment is currently closed, you can join the waitlist and begin pondering the book that God has placed on your heart.
To Read
Carla Galdo’s piece for Front Porch Republic also makes an interesting connection back to Annie Dillard. I loved her exploration of what it means to be “rooted.”
Sometimes, simply stepping outside can be a way of homing the world in the body, especially in an age that is constantly slapping new coats of virtual reality over our lives. Walking, hiking, running, or cycling over the swells of the earth is not just healthy, but often key to rooting us in the real. Back when I worked in small-town Wisconsin, I spent my break hours cycling through cornfields and pine forests that rolled under a sky more expansive than any I had ever known, where the heavens seemed to come down to meet me face-to-face. In those sparsely populated places, absent strip malls and high-rise office buildings, there was less to distract me from my own creatureliness.
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