Hurry Up and Slow Down

I read the newspaper almost every day. Sorry, C. S. Lewis.

Lewis hated newspapers, did not read them, and believed they contained false information on frivolous topics, all of it badly written. He was probably right (he usually was), and the following meditation may offer evidence to that end. Still, from my flutter-by sipping from the garish flowers of the New York Times' daily bouquet, I offer the following.

Two articles caught my attention yesterday. In one, scientists using sophisticated tracking collars have determined that 1) yes, the cheetah is the fastest land animal in existence, capable of speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour (just marginally faster than a teenager answering a text message), and 2) this is not really the secret of the big cat's high success rate. Instead, they say, it is the fleet feline's ability to slow down that accounts for most of its kills. A cheetah can decelerate by nine miles per hour in a single stride, and has an unusually flexible spine. These combined traits allow the mighty carnivore to spin nimbly in response to the evasive maneuvers of its prey. (Read more here. This blog is not responsible for  hauntings by the ghost of C. S. Lewis.)

In the other article, physician Abigail Zuger dares her fellow healers to do nothing, yet continue to treat the patient. (Read more here.) She distinguishes this from the "final nothing" of admitting to a patient that the doctor has exhausted treatment options. Instead, the challenge is "to stop doing anything. . .for a while but pass her the tissues" In other words, remain present, remain inactive, remain, well, darn it, just remain.

I think the combination of these two articles has some interesting implications for pastoral ministry. We live in a time when the ministry model for American Evangelicalism (my own particular ghetto of the Church; and yes, it is a neighborhood, not the whole city) prizes speed. Sometimes, though, I think the real trick is the ability to slow down, the gift of decelerating in a single stride without snapping my purpose-stiffened, purpose-driven spine. The Spirit is a breeze who blows where He will, graceful as a gazelle on the run. Perhaps the best means to our end in such a safari is a highly developed ability to slow down and change directions. Perhaps, just perhaps, the real measure of power is not how fast we can go from zero to sixty, but from sixty to zero.

Which brings me to Dr. Zuger, who goes Dr. Doolittle one better to urge those of us who undertake the cure of souls to become Dr. Do Nothing. Or, as Zuger ultimately phrases is, "Do No-Thing." Because no-thing means no tangible action, a stillness that makes room for plenty to happen. Without our the patented pills of our favorite texts, the magic elixir of our theological nostrums; without the sense of power and usefulness and worldly respectability that comes from knowing what to say or whom to call; with nothing. . . can we sit with the suffering Christ in the form of the sufferer before us for one hour? Ever notice how often Jesus talks to people before healing them? The Syro-Phoenecian woman, the man at the pool of Bethesda, blind Bartimaeus at Jericho. He's the do-nothing Messiah who doodles in the dust during a cross-examination by the Supreme Court. 

So let's learn today from the cheetah and the physician: Slow down in a hurry so you can sit with someone in need and go nowhere fast. Sometimes the shortest distance between two points isn't any kind of line, but another point.

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