You take your time.
Yesterday, I did a short “Morning Flow” yoga video. It was the first time since December I’ve been able to use my upper body like that. One more step towards normal, and it felt good.
As the online yoga class ended, the final transition from one pose to another, the teacher said a short phrase, in passing, just a gentle observation, that I felt God herself whisper directly to me. “You take your time.” That was it. The teacher said, take your time moving from savasana to sitting cross-legged and finishing the practice.
The yoga teacher meant that, but what my soul heard was, oh, so much more.
Take your time. There are so many levels to this bidding.
You take your time is a reminder to slow down. There is no rush. Take your time. There are no prizes for getting to the sitting cross-legged position first. Take your time, move slowly, and enjoy the ride.
I also hear a nudge to live and not let life live me. It’s easy to spend my days responding to demands rather than intentionally shaping my time with intention and grace. I serve my time rather than my time serving me. You take your time.
You take your time.
It felt personal and universal all at once.
On one level, I understand the grace of giving myself time to heal my skin, muscles, spirit, and heart. However, I like efficiency and effectiveness way too much. I’m constantly scanning ahead, thinking about efficiency and effectiveness. My default all too often these days is, “How can I heal and get this done most efficiently and effectively?” Which isn’t the right question, and I think that’s why “You take your time.” sparkled in my ears.
You, take your time.
Healing takes time. Sorting through the emotional and spiritual impact of my cancer diagnosis and experience takes time. It won’t be tied up with a nice bow and put on the shelf of the experiences of my life anytime soon.
In the yoga class, she wondered how the world would change if everyone started their days with the balance of effort and ease required by yoga.
I wonder what would happen if we all took our time. It feels so counter-cultural in an era where we are baited by a sense of false urgency every day, in most ways. Everywhere I turn in a day, from social media and reading the news to looking for a new couch. I am constantly reminded of the urgency and an alarming lack of time. Which, of course, is simply untrue. It requires much intentionality not to get sucked into the manufactured vortex of “not enough time”
Act now; the sale lasts only one more day, and there are only five more items left in stock. If you don’t decide today, it’s gone forever. It’s hard to step outside of urgency, of a created deficit, into a feeling of abundance.
You take your time reminds me of the abundance of time, opportunities, resources, and grace. It is so different from the prevailing message of “buy now!” “Act now!” “Be enraged now.” “Consider and decide now!” “If you are making decisions NOW, what are you doing with your life?!”
You, take your time, feels like a gentle breeze dancing over my soul, reminding me that time is a resource that I have in abundance. It’s a reminder to slow down and not let urgency and others' priorities “take” my time. I get to “take” my time.
You get to take your time!
You Take Your Time-A Blessing
You Take your time…to breathe deeply, notice the beauty, and listen to the pulsing of this “fragile earth, our island home”1. Take your time and move slowly and with care. Transitions don’t need to be rushed. There isn’t any need to hurry. You, take your time.
I’m slowly starting to read again! (I have not finished a single book in 2024. But I have a few books that I’m enjoying.)
Being Here: Prayers for Curiostiy, Justice, and Love by Pádraig Ó Tuama
This book is a collection of 31 daily prayers. Each day has an opening prayer, a reading, an invitation to silence, and a collect (a formal written prayer). I have loved Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work for years, and this one doesn’t disappoint.
“May we find stories and memories even in the most complicated corners.”
Pádraig Ó Tuama in Being Here
To Hear The Forest Sing Some Musings On the Divine by Margaret Dulany
I love this collection of essays so much! I carry it around—not that I read it all the time, but I read one before bed, then I carry it downstairs with me during the day and back up to by my bed at night. I love her very down-to-earth, practical writing; it’s what I aspire to do, and I’m so thankful I found her work.
“I don’t think any good thing should be hurried: a good meal, conversations, book, view, laugh, cry, day, chapter, life.”
Margaret Dulany in To Hear the Forest Sing
What to Remember When Waking
(Click to listen to David Whyte read this poem)
by David Whyte
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
from The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press
This phrase is from The Book Of Common Prayer-Eucharistic Prayer C https://www.bcponline.org/HE/he2-altgt.html#Eucharistic%20Prayer%20C
This made my day . I thought about it all day ! Thank you ❤️❤️
So wonderful to read about you and your recovery.