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| Trying to Find My Inner Tortoise The problem: how to live like a tortoise in a hare-brained world. You’d think that pastors wouldn’t have this kind of problem. After all, as any child of 8 understands, we don’t do anything but preach on Sundays. The rest of the week is ours. The rest of the week is ours — to be in rush hour traffic trying to get to the hospital to sit with Grandpa before, during and after his hernia operation because the Precious Tots Sunday school teacher called to say that her husband’s sister’s cousin was worried about her grandpa and would you visit. Pastors are the busiest people I know, although everyone seems to be busy these days. But this is no news to you. You know. You understand. Much of the busy-ness of a pastor’s life can’t be helped. You need to be at staff meetings, planning meetings and bored meetings. You need to be in the community working with municipal and religious leaders to help cope with some of the city’s urgent social needs. And — what we haven’t mentioned yet — pastors have a families. Pastors weren’t ordained prone on a slab of marble before the altar having sworn off sex for the rest of their lives. They have a spouse and children, and both are generally high-maintenance items. I’ve been learning, however, that busy-ness is, in part, a mentality. Some people can be busier than a preacher without a sermon on Saturday night, but have an attitude of serenity that makes the Dalai Lama look like a monk on Ritalin. Maybe it’s all the accouterments of busy-ness: the laptops, the cellphone-cum-camera-watch-e-mail-browser-calculator, Bluetooth earpieces and stuff. I myself have RPH Syndrome, an affliction that has emerged only in the past decade as a direct result of the flood of new technologies that make my life busier and more complex. It stands for Ringing Phone Hallucination, in which you think your mobile phone is ringing and it’s not. You hear it, you really do, and you might even feel it vibrating, but when you grab it, it’s not ringing and it’s not vibrating. And, what’s more, you’re faintly disappointed. You put it away, thinking, “Aw, shoot, I thought someone needed to talk to me. I was wrong. No one needed me right now — but wait, why don’t I check my e-mail?” Italians famously have a slow food culture started by Carlos Petrini in the late 1980s to resist the drift toward fast food and the loss of the leisurely Italian experience of being at table for more than just the food. There’s an American version, too. The Chinese have a word that expresses a similar thought: manhuozu, meaning “the slow clan.” These are people who choose to jack down the pace of life, eat slowly, pick out a book in the bookstore rather than buying it from Amazon, and so on. This attempt to calm the traffic on your superhighway life is called by psychologists “finding your inner tortoise.” It’s a quest I’ve now begun. But here’s the thing. I’ve been through this before. Slowing things down. You succeed, but all of a sudden, you’re speeding again. You have to set your life to cruise control, or it will get out of control. Here are some ideas: Don’t go to Starbucks. This is the place where people go who have the same problems as you. Why would Starbucks offer T-Mobile hot spots? This is like an alcoholic going to the “Ferret and Trouserleg” pub for a pint to relax with all his sotty mates. Always have a book. And don’t be embarrassed about the book. You can read a James Patterson crime novel quicker than you can read the gospel of John. But if that’s the genre you like, go for it. Walk. If the dry cleaners, bank or convenience store is only a 15-minute walk away, then walk. Or walk your neighborhood. Be prepared to stop and chat with neighbors. Get a bicycle. Don’t get a 75-speed super-racer that has more moving parts than a Lamborghini. (Having said that, I know I’m going to hear from Stan Purdum, one of the writers for Homiletics who has ridden across the U.S.A. from west to east and north to south, and lived to tell about it, writing two books about the experience. He finds that he was made — to paraphrase Chariots of Fire — to “ride for God’s pleasure.” If I rode like Stan rides, my chariot wouldn’t be on fire, my butt would be on fire.) I’m talking about a simple, fat-tire bike. Put a little basket on the front fender. Ride it to the grocery store, or the post office or the bank. You’ll look like a geek, but who cares? Have a devotional life. Do you read your Bible in a way that’s not related to the preaching task? I admit. I just threw these out there, although I personally find them helpful. But you may disagree, and that’s the point. Have you ever stopped to think about what needs to be done in your life to find your inner tortoise? The thing is, you have to do this, or you’re going to crash. Period. Me? I’m just afraid that when I find the tortoise, I’ll chop him up and throw him in the soup. But I’ll eat slowly. Then I’ll check my iPhone. In fact, it’s ringing right now. Oops. It’s not.
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