God’s mandate is love. Not efficiency. Not urgency. Not the breathless pace we’ve come to accept as normal.
Yet the speed of our lives is incompatible with love. The busyness we wear like a badge is not of God. Our joyless urgency—this constant striving, this inability to pause—is not holy. It is a symptom of forgetting who we are and whose we are.
We have brought this breathlessness upon ourselves. But we are not trapped. We can choose a new path.
Slowing down is not weakness—it is wisdom. It is the beginning of the contemplative life. To walk slowly is to walk with God. It is to reclaim stillness, to sanctify slowness, to let our days be shaped not by deadlines but by devotion.
The contemplative life invites us to resist the tyranny of the urgent and abide in the eternal. It’s the quiet courage to say: I will not be ruled by the clock, but by love. I will not measure my worth by output, but by openness. I will not skim the surface of my days—I will dwell.
I was recently invited to serve as a Spiritual Director at a retreat in Tucson, the desert. A beautiful place to be to hear the voice of the Lord. In the dryness of the desert, the Lord speaks to our hearts creating depth of relationship. We become anchored in God’s love, making space for wonder. For listening. For noticing the Spirit’s gentle nudge. It’s to let our souls catch up with our bodies and remember that God is not found in the whirlwind, but in the still, small voice.
And in that stillness, we are not unproductive—we are being remade.
As we look towards Advent which begins on November 30, we are invited into a season of sacred waiting. Not passive delay, but active expectancy. Advent is the Church’s gentle reminder to slow down, to watch, to prepare room. It is the liturgical permission to step off the treadmill and walk the contemplative path—anchored in love, open to mystery, and attuned to the coming of Christ.
Let us pause. Let us breathe. Let us return to the One who waits not at the finish line, but in the quiet moments we’ve rushed past. The path of love is always open. And it begins with a single, unhurried step.
Smitten With Goodness 