My friend Sarah and I had lunch the other day and we spent the time catching up on the past two weeks apart. Roommates this and graduation that and how short on sleep we both are. How technology gives us the power and expectation of ceaseless communication and immediate results; that the world seems to turn faster than it ever used to.
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Walking to class this afternoon a stroke of twitching red in the gnarled crab apple to my left caught my eye. A perfect red robin was standing on a branch just behind a shield of red berries stretching his small scaly legs and shaking his feathery body, his movements the equivalent of a yawn. With a small sharp dive, he alighted on the mulch under the shade of an OSU building's smokestacks, and I felt compelled to stop and watch. As multiple students passed me by, in groups and on cell phones with destinations and deadlines, I watched quietly as the robin's little wife cautiously hopped out into view from behind the bush at the foot of the crab apple tree and timidly began to help her mate forage the fallen berries. Sometimes she would suddenly stop and hunker down to glare at me, but she followed after her husband until they were both on the green grass. They seemed more uncomfortable so far from the tree, and I doubt my stalking was too terribly discreet, and they paused often to listen with ears I could not see. I heard what sounded like the faint chirping of young chicks, and on an unspoken cue they took off into the warm air together. I watched as they went gliding along with the occasional beaten wing, landing in a tall beech tree some 100 yards away from where I was standing. The whole scene had taken less than ten minutes. I felt very still. Calm. Refreshed.
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At lunch Sarah and I were musing together about the pace the world is going with the opportunities it has available. And we agreed that people shouldn't go as fast as they can, mostly because it's practically impossible. Look at our bodies: they have these strangely necessary defaults for rest that, in an era of constant motion, I believe is hard to understand. Yet psychologically, we must stop to appreciate beauty, such as music, such as art, such as I did when I was watching the pair of robins. And biologically. we must stop to eat and we must stop to sleep. We must stop to rest.
And, especially now, rest is costly, because of the numerous and various expectations of so many people. Yet we must take the time to understand our abilities and limitations and be able to say "no". We must develop the discipline of rest. But we're so busy being busy that we forget some important things that bear remembering:
The author of Ecclesiastes said that there is a time for everything, a time for speaking and for silence, a time for tearing and for mending. In this time of going and running there needs to be a time for slowing and stopping and resting. We forget that our running will be much better as a result.
Victor Hugo said "When you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake."
I think at the heart of this frantic pace is the forgetting that we don't have to be God.
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