Walking Life at the Speed of Love

Axioms for Wildness

Alive to the thrill

Of the wild.

Meet the dawn

On a mountain.

Wash your face

In the morning dew.

Feel the favor of the earth.

Go out naked in the wind,

Your skin

Almost Aeolian.

With the music inside,

Dance like there is no outside.

Become subtle enough

To hear a tree breathe.

Sleep by the ocean,

Letting yourself unfurl

Like the reeds that swirl

Gradually on the sea floor.

Try to watch a painting from within:

How it holds what it never shows.

The mystery of your face,

Showing what you never see.

See your imagination dawn

Around the rim of your world.

Feel the seamless silk of the ocean

Worm you in ancient buoyancy.

Feel the wild imprint of surprise

When you are taken in by your lover's eyes.

Succumb to warmth in the heart

Where divine fire glows.

—John O'Donohue*

I have just finished a very slow read of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. It's a short treatise --seasoned with lots of humour--on the spiritual disciplines of Silence and Solitude, Sabbath, Simplicity and Slowing down. The author laments our propensity to hurry, calling it 'the great enemy of spiritual life' and 'a form of violence on the soul'. He also says love, joy and peace are 'incompatible with hurry'!

Selah! Pause, be still and think on that for a moment.

We can't rush love or find joy doing life at warp speed, and peace (a deep shalom) will not join us in our hustle.

Instead, let's walk this life at the speed of Love and ‘become subtle enough, to hear a tree breathe.'

"God walks 'slowly' because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is 'slow' yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks."

--Kosuke Koyama in Three Mile an Hour God

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A friend read this poem at our Figs group this week, and I fell in love with it. I am looking forward to reading more of J. O'Donohue's works.