MAKE HASTE SLOWLY
This proverb appears in most languages: Latin, Vestina Lente; Greek, Speude Bradeoos; French, Hatez-vous lentement; German, Eile-sich langsam; English, Make haste slowly; Dutch, Haast u langzaam.
We all are in the hurry. For what? I too, in my advanced years, have trouble slowing down. I may tell myself that I have eternity and that Revelation 14: 13 tells me that “my good deeds will follow me into eternity”, so I should concentrate on ‘good deeds’ but that too is easier said than done.
All good things take time. Good whiskey, good wine, take years to reach perfection. Cultivating good habits is a long-term project. To write well, they tell me, takes at least one decade of constant practice. Will I ever learn? To gain wisdom takes a life-time, and even that is not enough, so we need eternity for that goal alone.
I continually try to improve myself: I have eternity in mind, am fully aware that our actions must be based on a vision what eternity is all about: perfection, in other words.
Jesus, in The Sermon on the Mount, tells us to be “perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect”. The Greek word for perfect is ‘teleios’ which has as root ‘telos’, a word we find back in tele-phone, which the Germans in their goal for genuine German words, call ‘Fernsprecher’, the correct translation of Telephone. The same is true in Telegram, Television, Telemarketing, Telecommuting, all indicating doing something ‘from afar’: telos, which means ‘far away’ in the New Creation, where things are ‘perfect’.
Make haste slowly, and, somehow, the Pandemic is teaching us ‘patience’. I believe – and that is a great comfort to me – that the Apostles’ Creed hit it on the head when this confession concludes with “I believe in the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting”.
“Make haste, slowly”. Eating should be done that way. Making love, too. Writing also falls in that category. Picking the right word, musing over an adjective, wondering about the story line. Suddenly an idea pops up, and the entire essay needs revamping. The choosing of a title for my blog changes at least twice, and often more frequent.
Still making haste slowly, does not always apply. I have that treadmill, and there the saying doesn’t fit. My first 10km race I had set a goal: 43.44 minutes. That was before the metric system came in and I still counted my distance in miles, just as the Marathon race is some 26 miles. So, I had in mind to do the 6.2 miles = 10km in 7 minutes per mile, for a total of 43.44 minutes. The first 3.1 miles, 5 km, I ran with a bunch of fast runners, and clocked it in 18 minutes. That was too fast: pain all over, so I had to slow down, but finished exactly in the time of 7 minutes per mile.
Now, 42 years later, I still run, but a lot slower. Last week it took me 40 minutes to cover 5 km. I have come to ‘hasting slowly’. Still I recommend to take up running. It has been clinically proven that for every hour of running – not walking, not biking – a person gains 7 hours of extra life-time, for a maximum of 3 years. I have far exceeded that time limit.
I started to run in 1960, 60 years ago, when a life-insurance client of mine was dying of lung cancer, and while he could hardly drink or eat, still smoked. That gave me the resolve to quit smoking and start running.
I used to run around the block in rural Tweed, 14 km, before breakfast, along a wooded road where I once, on a misty morning, saw a bobcat, lynx, at the edge of the forest, watching my progress, only his head slowly tracing my steady movement.
Running is good therapy. The human body is made for walking and running. I sometimes study my feet: such an elegant part of the body, slender, well-shaped, wonderfully made, exactly sculptured to carry the upper body gracefully and proficiently. The human body is a marvel of ingenuity.
Running, even now in my 93d year, makes me feel better, Before I set out, I feel tired, lethargic, grumpy. But once I have set my pace, tiredness disappears, hidden energies emerge, the brain gets into gear, ideas pop up out of the blue, and suddenly I am a new man, with new perspectives, new angles to a story, clearing the brains’ cobwebs,
Jesus’ disciples too were in the hurry: “when will you establish your kingdom?” was uppermost in their minds. That quest remained with them for decades, if not centuries. The band of believers in Jerusalem after Pentecost expected Jesus’ immediate return, but that was not in God’s plan.
Jesus himself had no inkling of this either: “Only God has the answer to the time of the Second Coming”, he said, and it appears that God is in no hurry, and that brings me to a question, the ultimate question: “When will the Parousia appear?
Matthew 24: 36 has the definite answer: ““But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” But, says Jesus, there will be definite signs, and these signs are there today everywhere. Also note the language. The text only mentions ‘the day and the hour’, not the month or year or decade.
Jesus also said, “The Lord is not slow in coming”. He wants the right kind of people to be part of the New Creation. The New Creation needs the experience and technical know-how also of the ‘Latter-Day Saints’. By the Latter-Day saints I don’t mean the Mormons, although there maybe some of those as well. Who knows? The New Creation will include those whom we consider ‘misfits’ and ‘crackpots’ and Greenpeace fanatics, and ‘preppers’, those who have readied themselves to live sustainable lives, because that’s what the New Creation is all about.
Yes, those who ‘make haste slowly’ will perfectly fit into the New Creation, because they will have eternity to pursue their hobby, the tabulation of all the different spiders, the exact number of birds, the counting of mammals, the tallying of different insects, all that will take eternity to register, and takes patience and prudence.
And how about historians, and artists, composers and playwrights. To do perfection – and perfection is the measure in eternity – takes time, and requires the critical eye and ear from others. And then there is eating, the perfect pie recipe, the most delicious delicatessen, the most adoring dress: and the list goes on. It all takes eternity to fashion, that’s why we now have the ‘trial and error’ stage.
So, yes, slow is in, speed is out. Perfection is in.
That’s why it is only out of that sort of a future that the present can be lived.