What does slow living mean right now?

Breaking ground, staying soft

I’ve been holding this question almost every day for the past few weeks:

What does slow living mean right now?

What does it mean to take our time? How do we determine the right pace for the work we’ve committed to? How do we resist the pull of capitalism and stress to create and produce more than we are able?

What does slow living mean for us in this moment?

In the world of seasonal living, which I believe to be very closely tied to living slowly, there’s the idea that wintertime is for quiet, internal and hidden work. Spring is for blossoms and the start of new life. Summer is for tending to the wildness of abundant growth. Fall is for letting former seasons make their way back to the earth, composting as nourishment for the future. And then we’re back to winter, where we rest again.

It’s such a beautiful cycle. It captures much of what it means to be alive: the necessary stillness, the need for newness, the maintenance of growing things, and the releasing and letting go.

As we sit at the halfway point between Spring and Summer, I find myself leaning again into lessons from the land. The earth is a generous teacher. As Alex and I have been taking baby steps towards creating our market garden and beautifying the acre around our house, slow living looks like paying attention to the many parallels between cultivating the earth and cultivating a life.

Breaking new ground

A few weeks ago, we tilled a 50 x 50 foot space for our market garden. Initially, Alex used a push rototiller but the engine gave out so he had to stop. Eventually, my dad drove his tractor up the road to our house and tilled it for us. Thank God for dads and tractors. What took my dad thirty minutes would have taken us much longer.

Our dream is for our garden to be “no till.” “No till” means building the soil slowly through mulching and compost. It also means less disturbance of the soil’s microbiome as well as caring for all of the little life forces keeping the earth healthy and supporting the production of our food. It’s a gentle process and it takes time.

But the ground where we live is so hard and compacted mulching and waiting would set us back at least a year from growing anything. Since we’re working towards market gardening being one aspect of our livelihood, waiting a year or so wasn’t an option. So we partnered with the heavy machinery and turned over the ground. It was a disturbance. Through it, we’ll be able to start planting in the next few days.

I tell this story because when the ground of our lives has been hardened by disappointment, or compacted by the pressures we feel, sometimes the only thing that can get through to us is a bit of disturbance. I hate this about life. I would much prefer the gentle route of mulching and waiting, but there are moments when pain, loss or change are the very things our stories need to push us into the next phase of our growth, healing and evolution.

And it’s not always a negative shift. Alex left his full-time job to reimagine his career and to begin this market garden. This has disturbed the ground of our life together. It’s uncomfortable; it’s creating new challenges. But it’s also breaking up the soil of our lives so that we are prepared to receive new possibilities for the future.

A reflection for you to consider: Where in your life has the soil has been hardened by disappointment or compacted by pressure? Where might there be room to let pain, loss, or change do its work in you to break up the soil and increase your capacity to receive? What support do you need in the process?

This could be what slow living means for you right now.

Staying soft

The greater the softness of the landing place, the greater the capacity to receive.

Once the ground is broken up, staying soft is the next invitation.

Rain water keeps the ground soft. Gentle cultivation with hand tools keeps the ground soft. Adding compost and manure keeps the ground soft.

There are all sorts of ways we partner with God to keep the earth receptive in our garden, so that when its time to sow seeds and plant our seedlings, the ground is ready to receive and provide nourishment.

Our souls are the same way. You can’t convince me otherwise. Our capacity receive is directly correlated with our ability to stay soft.

Staying soft is no easy feat. The world has countless ways, it seems, to remind us that our vulnerability is a liability. I remember years ago, Austin Channing Brown and Brene Brown discussing the ways in which vulnerability is so often inaccessible to, or weaponized against, Black women, because the world has not been a safe place for us.¹

What does it take to stay soft in a society where safety feels unattainable? What does it take to stay soft in a life full of pressure to perform at work, to love ourselves and others well, to raise wholehearted kids, to save money, to serve our communities and more?

How do we stay soft?

This is a slow living question.

I’m not great at this, but I think it has something to do with nourishment, rest and with asking for help.

My plate has been very full the past few weeks, which is perhaps why I’ve been asking myself, What does slow living mean right now? I’ve been asking because I don’t really know. It has to be more than standing barefoot in the sun or mindfully brewing my morning coffee, right?

Or maybe, that’s exactly what one needs to do in the midst of life’s most stressful and busy seasons. Standing barefoot in the sun, slowly sipping good coffee, listening for the birds and letting the tough stuff just be. Without doing anything about it.

This is hard for me. It sounds revolutionary.

Given the fullness of my plate, I’m going to take a couple of weeks off from blogging. It could be more, but my hope is to be back with you all soon. Showing up here on Substack, and sharing these reflections with all of you, is one of my favorite activities in any given week. But I’m also doing my best to honor my limitations, to pull back on even the good things that are overextending me in this season, and to…well…slow down a bit.

Thank you for being here. I’d love to hear what, if anything, shimmers for you from this post.

Be well friends.

Bethaney

1. The Next Question on YouTube - featuring Brene Brown