Nothing can be loved at speed

There is a line in a prayer by Michael Leunig, that stood me still. 

Nothing can be loved at speed. 

Nothing can be loved while you are running out the door, nothing can be loved while your mind is racing, nothing can be loved when a thousand forms of fear are chasing you. 

Love requires that we establish a tolerance for peace and the pace of peace. 

Most of us find ourselves running around with our hair on fire because we are addicted to thought. 

A Course in Miracles says It is ONLY your own thoughts that can harm you. 

Your negative thoughts block the thoughts of Love. Your positive thoughts are but shadows on the thoughts of Love. 

It’s funny to think that Love invites us to be thoughtless. Too much thinking can lead to a self-centered state of being and eventually to analysis paralysis. 

We think about it or talk about it instead of being about it. 

Thinking is not knowing. 

Thinking I do on my own. 

Thinking I do with Ego

Knowing I do with God. 

Knowing or Gnosis is Holy Communion.

That is why we are encouraged to “Be still and know God.” 

Not 

Be still and think, God. 

We have been invited, time and time again, to be still and know God. 

But this invitation goes unattended. Even when we meditate, we get physically still, and we keep thinking. What are we thinking about? What has our minds running? These thoughts are the blocks to knowing. 

I seem to be thinking about tomorrow or yesterday. 

But I am here. I don’t need my thoughts. My thoughts murder this moment.  

Instead, let me take a break from my thoughts and just experience this moment, my breath, the air on my skin, the weight of my body in this chair. Let me get comfortable in the other way of being. 

Another way of being by Michael Leunig

Dear God,

We pray for another way of being:
another way of knowing.

Across the difficult terrain of our existence
we have attempted to build a highway
and in so doing have lost our footpath.

God lead us to our footpath:
Lead us there where in simplicity
we may move at the speed of natural creatures
and feel the earth’s love beneath our feet.

Lead us there where step-by-step we may feel
the movement of creation in our hearts.

And lead us there where side-by-side
we may feel the embrace of the common soul.
Nothing can be loved at speed.

God lead us to the slow path; to the joyous insights
of the pilgrim; another way of knowing: another way of being.

Amen.