SLOW!

I cut my hair this week. It’s always an experience. The nice kind.

I frequent a neighborhood joint just a hop, skip, and jump from my place. It used to be manned by a trio of old guys, usually found napping in their own barber chairs, waiting for the unwary customer with hair too long or beard too unkempt. It used to be a trio. The founding member died last year. Now it’s a duet of old guys. The consummate artist in charge of my scalp is Dee, a portly character with glasses, a Lutheran, and an active one at that.

This week was no different from the usual visit. One hour! Yes, one hour, of pure relaxation! Dee takes his time. Conversationalist par excellence, he takes frequent breaks to indulge in dissertating on the woes of the world. With scissors in hand, employed like a conductor’s baton, he disparages federal, state, and city governments. His voluble utterances are punctuated by stabs in the air at imaginary opponents, and I try to dodge the flying rapier, as I sit captive under a maroon coverlet, swaddled and straitjacketed! But it’s fun. He takes his time.

This local operation is my non-alcoholic version of the Cheers bar.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,

And they're always glad you came.
Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo © 1982

Dee knows my name, what I do, where I live, when I’ll turn up next, my SS#, everything! He shows me suspicious skin lesions, likes to talk about church stuff, and often tells me (yes, he tells me) what’s happening at the Seminary located just a couple of blocks away.

Yup, he takes his time.

Oh, and the coup de grâce, the shoulder massage, with one of those agitating gizmos that Dee straps on to his hand and places in contact with my scapula, clavicle, spine, and cranium. Everything shakes—brain, eyeballs, cochlea, tongue, heart, trachea …. A delightful way to get a workout. (I bet it literally vibrates a few thousands calories off my anatomy.)

A lost art! He takes his time.

Relationships take time. No instant gratification here. No quick fixes. No rapid fire kinship. So it is with God, too. Relationships take time.

Take time to be holy,
Speak oft with thy Lord;

Abide in Him always,
And feed on His Word.

Make friends of God’s children,
Help those who are weak,

Forgetting in nothing
His blessing to seek.
Will­iam D. Long­staff, 1882

Take time!

Devote yourselves to prayer,
keeping alert in it ….
Colossians 4:2

Our Lord gave us the example.

But Jesus Himself would often
slip away to the wilderness and pray.
Luke 5:16

And we? We have no time to pray!

Yet the time spent on TV by the average American per year is 1,512 hours = 63 days of non-stop TV-watching, 24–7.

Relationships take time.

Luther, replying to someone who asked him about his plans for the next day, said: “I plan to work, work, from early till late. In fact, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first 3 hours in prayer.”

As St. Benedict said, Orare est laborare. To pray is to work.

So …

Pray without ceasing.
1 Thessalonians 5:17

And that includes praying with others in the family of God.

They were continually
devoting themselves
to the apostles' teaching
and to fellowship,
to the breaking of bread
and to prayer.
Acts 2:42

Relationships take time. Devoted in prayer. Go slow. Invest. Then … profit.