Category: Slow Down!
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Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected
The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, hyperkinetic, and hyperconnected. For any really good reason? What's the rush? Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, thoughtless hustler? From time to time we need to slow down and unplug. Try to go deviceless for a few days. Haul off to some desert spot and rest incommunicado, out of…
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If you need an app to pray . . .
. . . I will say a prayer for you. You don't even need the 'closet' referred to at Matt 6:6: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee…
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Jack Kerouac on Robert Lax
During his years of unsuccess, when he was actually at his purest and best, an "unpublished freak," as he describes himself in a late summer 1954 letter to Robert Giroux, living for his art alone, Kerouac contemplated entering a monastery: "I've become extremely religious and may go to a monastery before even before you do."…
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Slow Down!
Substack latest ……………………… Dave Bagwill comments: I've enjoyed Lin Yutang's book The Importance of Living for quite some time. Your post today (5/26) reminded me of a number of quotes from that book. Here's a couple, and a link. He is definitely on the "sunnier side of doubt." (Tennyson) “Besides the noble art of getting…
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The Lure of the Trail
Modern man, a busy little hustler, doesn't know how to live. Substack latest.
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Of E-Mail and Doing Nothing
I do appreciate e-mail, and I consider it rude not to respond; but lack of time and energy in synergy with congenital inefficiency conspire to make it difficult for me to answer everything. I am also temperamentally disinclined to acquiesce in mindless American hyper-kineticism, in accordance with the Italian saying: Dolce far niente Sweet to…
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The Upside of the Shutdown: A Salutary Slowdown
A strange vibe supervened the other morning during a leisurely meander over the local hills. It was as if the world's volume had been dialed down. Things had become calmer and quieter. Or so it seemed. "An upside of the shutdown," I said to myself. The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, and hyperkinetic. For…
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Thomas Merton on Henry Thoreau
Journals, vol. 4, p. 235, 8 August 1962: Thoreau's idleness was an incomparable gift and its fruits were blessings that America has unfortunately never learned to appreciate. Yet he made his gift, though it was not asked for. And he went his way. If he had followed the advice of his neighbors in Concord, America…
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Slow Thought: A Manifesto
A little squishy and Continental, but worth reading.
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Texting Their Lives Away?
I am currently reading, among other things, Kevin Mitnick, The Art of Invisibility, Little, Brown & Co., 2017. A treatise on cyber-security, it strikes me as slightly alarmist, but Steve Wozniak recommends it. I don't have to tell you who he is. The following, however, caught my eye and pricked my philosopher's skepticism: A recent…
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Of E-Mail, Doing Nothing, and a Life Worth Living
I do appreciate e-mail, and I consider it rude not to respond; but lack of time and energy in synergy with congenital inefficiency conspire to make it difficult for me to answer everything. I am also temperamentally disinclined to acquiesce in mindless American hyperkineticism, in accordance with the Italian saying: Dolce Far Niente Sweet To…
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SCOTUS and Benedict
In the wake of recent events, Rod Dreher renews his call for the Benedict Option: It is now clear that for this Court, extremism in the pursuit of the Sexual Revolution’s goals is no vice. True, the majority opinion nodded and smiled in the direction of the First Amendment, in an attempt to calm the…
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Waiting for St. Benedict. Various Withdrawal Options
Alasdair MacIntyre's 1981 After Virtue ends on this ominous and prescient note: It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which…
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February in the Zone
February brings to the Sonoran desert days so beautiful that one feels guilty even sitting on the back porch, half-outside, taking it all in, eyes playing over the spring green, lungs deeply enfolding blossom-laden warmish breezes. One feels that one ought to be walking around in this earthly heaven. And this despite my having done…
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Breathe Deeply and Slow Down
Dave Bagwill referred me to this entry from Zen Habits: Breathe. If you feel overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions. If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present. If you are moving too fast,…