Episode 238 - Alan Fadling, “An Unhurried Life"

“The trajectory of spiritual growth is in the direction of simplicity rather than in the direction of complexity.” - Alan Fadling

On this edition of Restoring the Soul, Michael welcomes Alan Fadling to ponder questions that not many people want to - or have the courage - to ask, “Do you want a Jesus who is relaxed? When you think of Jesus, is He relaxed?” Living an Unhurried Life is central to Alan’s story - so stay with us as you will hear about his journey out of the fast lane and into the relaxed rhythms of Jesus. You just may find a kinship that will also help your recovery.

Alan Fadling is a frequent speaker and consultant with local churches, national organizations, and leaders internationally. A trained Spiritual Director, Alan is the author of “An Unhurried Life and An Unhurried Leader.” He has also written “What Does Your Soul Love?” co-authored with his wife, Gem Fadling, who was Michael’s guest on a recent podcast.

Discover more about Alan and his ministry here.

In this podcast, we hope you will discover:

• What a lifetime of being “fruitful that lasts” looks like.
• The Christian life is a relationship with God through Christ Jesus.
• What disengagement practices look like.

HELPFUL RESOURCES:
Episode 237 - Gem Fadling, “Hold That Thought"

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Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Unknown: 0:12

Hello and welcome to restoring the soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience. I'm your producer Brian Beatty, thank you for listening. On this edition of restoring the soul. Michael welcomes Alan fatling to ponder questions that not many people want to, or have the courage to ask, Do you want a Jesus who is relaxed? And when you think of Jesus, is he relaxed? Living an unhurried life is central to Allen story. So stay with us. As you'll hear about his journey out of the fast lane and into the relaxed rhythms of Jesus. You just may find a kinship that will help you in your journey as well. Alan fatling is a frequent speaker and consultant with churches, national organizations and leaders internationally. A trained spiritual director, Alan is the author of an unhurried life and an unhurried leader. He's also written what does your soul love co authored with his wife, Jim fatling, who was Michael's guest in a recent podcast, we'll be sure to add the link to our show notes. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael John Cusack. So Alan fatling, I want to first of all, thank you for coming on the podcast. It's great to be with you, Michael. Thanks for having me. And thank you for your book, and in your book telling your story of how you are recovering speed addict. Yeah, I use that language very intentionally. You know, I have friends who are in recovery from addiction to alcohol and addiction to drugs and other sort of lifestyle addictions. But my own addiction is this inner soul hurry, that I find I am still in recovery from that's a relief right away to hear that we're all still in recovery from the right, yeah, there's really no finish line. Although we'd like it to be the case. I would like to spend most of our conversation talking about your book and unhurried life, following Jesus rhythms of work and rest. This book came out in 2013 with InterVarsity press. But just months ago, it was re released. And it's revised and expanded. And there's study questions in it. I told you before we started that, that I've heard your name, that there's a lot of people that we both know, that have crossed paths. I've not actually read the book cover to cover. And here's my my ironic confession. I do a lot of speed reading books. Of course. Yeah, in our business, you know, we have to information is, is the economy. And so I probably eight out of 10 books that I buy, or come across my desk, I'll spend an hour with it, or maybe even less, and I gleaned the big ideas. Yours is a book that when it came, I said this is something I have to read and go through slowly and make a part of my life. Because here I am at the at the start of this podcast talking about an unhurried life and what you teach. And this has been one of the busiest most stressful days in a long time. And I'm just racing into this podcast. So unpack how you went from being addicted to the soul speed drug of busyness and activity, while you're in ministry to a place where now you're teaching folks about a different way this rhythm and way of Jesus. Yeah, so you know, in the book, and I tell a bit of my story. And in some ways I write this book because I need it. And telling my story is is one of you know, being a pastor, a young pastor, newly married in a larger church, rather driven culture, I'm a full time seminary and at the same time, and it'll come as no surprise to you that I was hitting burnout in my late 20s. And that's not good pacing, you know, to to be hitting what feels like you know, the end of the road in your late 20s. But that's where I was. And I hit a kind of crisis of ministry. And at the time, God was kind enough to bring a few mentors into my life who and I just said in some ways what they did was reintroduced me to Jesus, but not just a Jesus to believe about, but a Jesus to walk with to learn from. And then little by little, I think the idea of Jesus as an unhurried Savior began to dawn on me that had his way of treating people and his way of walking with the Father and, and his way of making disciples and pouring into this little circle of followers. There's something about that way that I found increasingly intriguing and that I realized I needed. And you talk about, in the preface in the first chapter about some of the ways where Jesus was unhurried, and even how God Himself was unheard, you know, in bringing Jesus about and that he didn't start his ministry till the age of 30. I just thought this was a great story is that in your relationship with Dallas Willard, he proposed this idea to you that that Jesus was relaxed, and that you said about studying and looking at the scriptures and see if that was really true. Yeah, yeah, the story of that is a good friend of mine. His name is Bill Galtier had that conversation with Dallas. And this idea of Jesus's relaxed was sort of the punchline of their conversation. And when I heard that, I was done by it. I honestly, I heard the word relaxed. And I thought, I don't know if that's good. I don't know if I want a Jesus who's relaxed, I'm afraid is that Jesus sitting in a recliner, watching ESPN with the remote in his hand? So I did, I went off on a multiple day retreat. And really what I did in that time was read the gospels over and over with that question is Jesus relaxed? And in the back of my mind, the other question was in is that good? And little by little two things happen. One, I realized that is a genius as, as things Dallas would say, often were the genius vision of Jesus. And for me, you know, his other word of unhurried to the problem of hurry began to surface to is Jesus unhurried way is an antidote for so much of what I personally wrestle with, in my own soul, in my own relationships, and in my work. And so yeah, that vision of Jesus as relaxed as a good thing, and Jesus as unhurried, as a model that I'd like to follow, really began to become compelling. And it was a seed that gave birth eventually to this book. I appreciate you asking the question and putting in that qualifier, you know, is Jesus relaxed? And is that a good thing? Does, you know we would all go bowl? Yeah. But in the corporatized church, that is more often about events and functions and driven by numbers, you can't be relaxed, and have that be a good thing, right? Because relax, that's for losers. That's what the business world would say, we've got to work. We've got a bottom line, we've got a mission to accomplish. So how did you? I mean, tell me what that question looked like for you. Is it a good thing? Yeah. No, that's that's well said? It's a great question. Because I've had to dive deep on that at a number of levels. So for one, I find myself positively haunted by a line in John 15, where Jesus says, you know, you didn't choose me, I chose you and I appointed you to go bear fruit, and then he qualifies the nature of it. And he says, fruit that last. And for me, what I began to realize is I was in the habit of measuring fruit in little teeny, tiny, tiny windows, like the quarterly, numerical, you know, butts in seats, dollars in the coffers kinds of measures. And of course, numbers like that matter, in the sense that we're reaching. I'm not trying to negate that. But fruit that lasts, you're going to be hard pressed to measure that in quarterly reports, you're going to need to tell five year and 10 year and 20 year stories, to be able to talk about fruit that lasts. So that began to change my vision of what would a lifetime of being fruitful, in the workout entrusted to me, what would a lifetime of being fruitful in a way that lasts looked like? And it wasn't always going to be measured in numeric terms and, and in fact, the journey that I took from about that moment for the next 20 years looked a whole lot more like Harry nouns phrase, downward mobility. My resume did not look like going from big church to bigger church to corporate position to popular author, but it looked like it was going from big church to smaller church to church plant that died to sabbatical and then being largely invisible for a long time. But that was the place I think, where where God's work in me was the focus. And God's work through me was going to be the fruit of that. And so it was it wasn't the typical, you know, journey of, of a young adult moving into ministry. But what I'm grateful for is, you know, fruit that lasts, I think always is measured in terms of people, people with faces and names and stories, not 1000s of people sitting in a room, necessarily, but those particular stories of particular people experiencing God growing in that, and that's become the focus of my work over the last 20 or so years. And I, I feel like I can be grateful for some fruit that I already see as last. I love that, as you talked about the downward mobility of your resume going in the opposite direction, and you reference now and it made me think of his, the words in in the name of Jesus, where he said that every Christian leader and I would argue, every Every Christian Needs to come face to face with the irrelevant self. The part of us that, because of our striving, and our hurry, and all the great things that we can do that we need to get out from behind that and just see our native self. Which leads me to a quote, one of the things I love about your book is that there's some amazing one liners but they're not intended to be one liners. So this idea if your book title is The unhurried life, and then therefore, hurry is what keeps us from that you said that hurry is not just a disordered schedule. curried is a disordered heart. Come in on that. Yeah. So I think one of the things that was really helpful I remember hearing once the Dallas said, Don't make the mistake of confusing, busy and hurried as though they were the exact same thing. Busy. That's your calendar. I mean, you're describing a day that's been packed. I've, I've had seasons where, you know, the schedule just feels like it's it's unending, you know, sometimes it's a travel window. So there are times of busy, Jesus was busy. But Dallas would say, remember, busy that your calendar, hurry, that's your soul. And that distinction helps me because I think it's possible to have busy seasons, lived in an unhurried way with an unhurried soul. That's been key for me. Because when I talk about Hurry, I'm really not talking about how full my calendar is. I'm talking about what's happening inside of me. And so it's helped sometimes to unpack what do I mean by hurry. So for me, for example, anxiety is a form that hurry takes in my soul, that driven by worry sort of mode or hurry has looked inside of me like a desperate craving for people to like, and admire me and what I do. Or it's looked like me needing to do enough to be important in the eyes of others. And so all of those are like motors. You know, when it comes to the anxiety, one, for example, you know, anything I could do in anxiety, I could actually do better in peace. I'm coming to believe that I'm, I'm coming to believe that I get better work done. When I slow down. I'm a little wiser, I have a little better perspective, I have more creativity, I have more energy. When I'm frantically hurrying, driven in some of the ways I'm accustomed to having been driven in the past. I may get along to do list, but I'm not confident that the work I'm getting done has some lasting value. Because of the the engine that's driving it. Do you ever still at this point on your journey of living unhurried wrestle with an ambivalence? You know, because I've read the books I've I've taught on this material. It's been transformational in terms of my own recovery from addictions and, you know, I would add that hurry equals compulsivity. That's another huge piece and you write about that in the chapter on temptation. But there's this ambivalence in me of my heart, my body, my nervous system longs to be unhurried. And you know, as we're talking about before the podcast started Dallas Willard and being in his presence, you just felt his, his the weight of his restfulness. And the he was not in a rush. And I longed for that. And then I go, but wait a minute, I've got to do more. I want to I want to meet that other person for lunch. And I want to, you know, play with this gadget or read this newspaper article or that kind of thing. And so it feels like there's a tension. And what's it been like for you with that? Yeah, no, that's fair. You know, me being in recovery. I I have my friends who are in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. It's rather clear how they measure recovery and count the days it's a little harder for me to know how to count the days of my recovery. You know, from hurry, you know, but I think I experienced some of the same kinds of ambivalence, what I've been trying to cultivate, is a vision of an unhurried life that is more productive, more fruitful than filling my life with more activities. There's a there's a qualitative nature to it. But you know, I'm, you know, I've, we've got a podcast, and we have an organization, and I've written books, and I want more people to read them and listen to them. And, and I'm thinking about how to do that. And at the same time, I'm trying to find Well, I wonder if I could find some encouragement in a Jesus whose work at the moment of his crucifixion would not have impressed many people, kind of not a lot to show for his activity with the 12, the crowd sort of turned on him, it's kind of hard to tell a great story at that moment about him, you know, except if you look at the impact of his life over 10, and then 100, and 1000. And now you and I, having a conversation about the impact of his life, now, unhurried, in his case, was the utterly most fruitful possible, life to live. And he manages to have that impact in just three years of human life. So I, for me, it's been trying to capture a vision that actually, the present moment, the little moment in which I'm living is so full of grace, that if I slow down, I'll be able to enjoy more of it, I'll be able to share more of it with others, I may find that that will be far more fruitful than some of my own sort of compulsive tendencies to want to be to do more and to acquire more and to impress more people. Maybe I have more than that available to me in this present moment. I love that it reminds me of another one liner. You talk about living at The pace of grace. And man when I read that I started dreaming about a campaign teeshirts website, social media, the pace of grace tour, and how we could build it and they will come and then I was like, yep, there I go again. It's funny, as opposed to just taking the rest of my life and saying, What if I just gave myself to that one idea of living at the pace of grace, which is right now, because you know, Grace doesn't apply to the past or the future, of course, God's their redemption, and hope. But the President is where grace is. So that's such an idea. And it feels like Jesus unhurried illness really emerged out of his relationship with the Father, and that the Trinity was not in a rush. Even the fact that God took 1000s of years to send the Savior of mankind right when he could have done it an hour after they ate the fruit. Of course, yeah, I think that's what that's probably part of what I'm trying to get at is I'm, I've been trying to cultivate over time, a vision of goodness that's rooted in unhurried grace. And you know, in my own tradition, kind of grew up in a very conservative kind of Christian tradition. And our tendency was to see grace as mostly like a doorway you walk through, and you wanted to make sure everyone walked through that doorway, and hurray for the doorway. I'm so glad I'm in the door. But then from like, the next step on it was really unclear how Grace apply to anything else. So what's become helpful to me is this idea of grace in the present moment, the idea that grace not only is there a sense of doorway to it and entry, but there's a sense of pathway to it. Like every single step, my life is a gift. And my work is a gift and the opportunity to enjoy and to rest. That's a gift and the more I can see my moments and my opportunities as gifts, boy, the more graced my life feels and the easier it feels to me to, you know, to live that this gracious pace that I see in Jesus. Is there an aspect to this where it's about in that gracious pace? It's about receiving what is given as opposed to grasping for something that's not yet given? Yeah, I really love the word receptivity. And one of the things when I'm talking with leaders, you know, I'll say that a lot of us as leaders have wonderful instincts when it comes to activities, like doing good things, and doing them strategically and doing them, you know, efficiently, effectively, whatever our activities. But many times as leaders, we struggle to cultivate our receptivity, he's, you know, so if you thought of leadership as breathing, we're very good at the exhale. And we struggle at the inhale. But I think, again, you know, to be the kind of presence that Jesus is wherever he goes, or as we've been talking about how Dallas Willard was such a presence, or I can think of other seasoned saints, who simply lived Jesus in a way that was compelling and, and inviting, and, and inspiring to me. I aspire to be such a person. And I, I think, especially in the world in which we find ourselves now, where we're hurry is not just a modern problem, or just a Western problem, but it's, it's proving to be a human problem. I get to travel everywhere, talking about these ideas in other cultural environments. And it's, it's not just because now we have iPhones and so now we're, we're hurried. This is this is a human dynamic, our compulsive driven sense to prove something that God has already said is true of us, or our compulsive sense to reach out there somewhere for the thing I think I need, when in fact, in God, now here with me, I have the good things that I need to live well and to work well. It's really a redrawing of the Genesis three story of reaching for the fruit grasping, for and receiving and in the liturgical churches, the Catholic Anglican, some of the Lutheran, when they go to take the Eucharist or communion, they don't reach for it, they hold their hands open, or when I was a kid growing up Catholic, we would hold our mouth open and it would be placed upon our tongue and the symbolism of that is very, very intentional, that you you must receive you have to be receptive for grace. So I love your emphasis on that. Can you unpack what I want to do is talk about the you know, as you go through the book, The chapters emerge, it's not of course a how to live an unhurried life, but it's really looking at Jesus and God's provision and way of doing the unhurried life. But talk a little bit about you made the statement that you came to this place where you had a desire to know this unhurried savior. And before you, you know, you you got all the practices and rhythms down what did that look like once that awakening happened in you from an activity driven ministry to more of a ministry that was about being in silence and solitude? What did that transition look like? Yeah, no, I appreciate that question. I think what I would say is that I was trained by mentors, I was trained, maybe not so much in the seminary studying, but especially by kind of mentor like leaders in my life, that ministry was mostly about being an amazing communicator, and planning as much program, you know, events and things as you possibly could. So I was mentored in that, and I was trained in that and prayer. Of course, we prayed, we're all Christians, we pray, we would open our, you know, leadership team meetings in prayer, two or three whole minutes. And, you know, the problem was, I didn't have a vision of prayer and life with God as, as like the soil in which ministry grows. I saw it as a thing you should do personally, because that's what good Christians do. But now when we're talking about leadership, we're on a different island. We're in a different room. We're working on a different set of rules. And I think, you know, as I said earlier, one of the mentors that became so meaningful to me, you know, he reintroduced me to Jesus, but not a Jesus who was my boss in ministry, but a Jesus who was you know, a big brother who was a friend who called me friend of Jesus who longed for me to know his father. So there was this relational vision of ministry not as a thing I did for God. Gosh, sometimes it was something I did for God to avoid God. But instead ministry and living my life in communion with God, this was a this was a with God, reality and so, you know, I've come to think that Jesus favorite metal for you, and one of them was this metaphor of a yoke. And I think in their early years, I imagined Jesus having a yoke in his hand, handing it over to me. And then I had to put it on my shoulders. And I went off and figured out what to do with it, instead of a vision of Jesus is in the yoke. And he says, Look, I've got a place for you here, right next to me, let's do this together. That sense of communion, that sense of collaboration was what I began to discover as a living reality. And it, it became more restful to be involved in the work of God, in my particular places, it felt more collaborative like, in the same way, Jesus intended to say only what he heard the Father saying, or to do what He saw the Father doing that I was somehow little by little learning how to do the same as in relationship to him. And I found that really, really life giving and it was, it was tumultuous, the thing I'll say, is moving from a more program centered to a more sort of maybe formational, or spirituality, or even relational centered ministry, it was way harder, it was a lot easier just to manage a bunch of programs, I didn't have to get involved in the messes of any people's lives, I could just plan these things and just get mad at them. If they didn't attend them. You know, it was easy, simple. When we began to move deeper with God, we then had to go deeper with one another. And suddenly the relational tensions in the personal challenges. This was now the, this was the stuff of ministry, this was what we were working on. And I didn't realize that was going to be one of the fruits of going deeper in my communion with Jesus, it just turns out, I started to realize what mattered to him. In this group of college students in my case that I was trying to shepherd. It strikes me in my own work and ministry in that transition as well that the Kiwanis or a secular organization could create really compelling events that are emotional, and even life changing. But again, that that's short lived, but that it takes something supernatural, and spirit, to just do relationships and to have something powerful and fruitful emerge out of that. So what were what were one or two of the big catalysts that took you and I know you talk about this in the book that took you from that, that activity and functional aspect of ministry into this other place, because unlike a lot of people, you know, in my story, it's like my life had to be blown apart and dismantled. And I learned the hard way, but you don't necessarily have that story. Yeah, I think there have been a number of things that were really key. I could pick sort of one. It was the practice of extended solitude in silence, which, gosh, you know, 30 years ago, I remember reading Dallas Willard spirit of the disciplines and I already had celebration of discipline in my library from Richard Foster. And and I had taught messages about solitude and silence. I could, I could preach it with the best of them. I just hadn't tried it in myself. All except for that part, you're part of that club, too. Yeah, I was an excellent preacher. For some reason, I didn't feel like I needed to actually do it myself. It was a little bit odd. But but it was that as a living practice, modeled for me by another one of my mentors, for whom this was his ministry of helping leaders like me, realize that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places, you know, that Luke 516 line. And chi joked that I don't know if that verse was in my Bible for the first 10 years of my Christian experience. I don't remember reading it, or hearing it or hearing it taught about, but he often withdrew to lonely places. And so I began to a little more often withdraw. Lonely, yeah, well solitary, in a wilderness, a time where there's nobody to impress a time when there's really nothing to be accomplished. A time when there's nothing to be solved at a time that's simply measured in terms of relationship, that the tradition in which I find myself has always said that the Christian life is a relationship with God through Christ. And yet somehow, in my experience of it, I had lost touch with the reality of that relationship as something alive that I could cultivate, that I could be rooted in. So I continue now, this is about 30 years later, I continue to find that that rhythm of stepping away whether it's a weekly Sabbath, or it's a month day, or it's an occasional multiple day retreat, or it's a moment at the beginning of my day, or even a little moment, right in the middle of my very busy day, where I inhale. Instead of just going to the next exhale, I stop. And I remember, maybe I just say thank you. Maybe I read a simple little line from scripture, call it to mind. But it's this little moment of remembering. Those are the kinds of practices Dallas's definition of spiritual practices were essentially engagement practices and abstinence. Or you could say disengagement. Again, as leaders were very good at the engagement sorts of practices, and the challenging ones are the disengagement, the not doing practices. Those became easy for me to continue to cultivate this more unhurried approach. And as you teach, what are some of those disengagement practices? I know typically, people think of fasting, and that fasting is just from food, but it's technology fasting, but what are some of the other disengagement ones that are harder? Yeah. So you know, some of the important ones to think about would be solitude, which is to say, you know, we disengage from the normal human reaction, there's silence, we disengage from our normal sort of talking and communicating. Simplicity, we disengaged from our cleanliness, our grasp Enos, for the things that we own are the things that we want to acquire. You know, there is fat, and all of its forms, you know, certainly food is the primary biblical illustration. But for me, technology, fasting has been key, having windows of time where I do not have access to, to my device. I think secrecy is important for us, the doing of good that will impress no one, because they won't know it was me doing it. I think that becomes really key in our sort of celebrity leadership culture. Yeah. So those are some of the abstinence practices that I think are really important to weave into our communion with God. Thanks for that, by the way, the one about doing things for for people without knowing kind of secretly serving. I do that a lot. And I just want everybody to know it. Yeah. Yeah. It's important that they realize that Yeah, that's right. Another one. I feel like we're dropping Dallas Willard 's name today. Like, I know, like, we accepted Him into our heart or something. But but the thinking of the disengagement he said once that he was practicing not having the last word. Yeah. You remember that? I do. I Well, I've heard it before. I know. My friend Jan Johnson, who's been a close friend of Dallas's has often kind of quoted that line. So I think those are the things those are the opportunities where we're so clinging to, in that case, our sense of being right, or having the last word, or correcting the guy who said the dumb thing that, you know, they shouldn't have said, and I know better than him anyway. It's good for my soul, to be free from that compulsive need to get everything, you know, tied up and, and correct. So yeah, I again, I think the longer I go in this journey, you know, this receptive posture of watching for what it is, God seems to be initiating, finding the ways to join God in the work, I think I'm discerning God doing, that's proving to be fruitful, it's harder to five year plan that it's it's much more about learning to sort of live in those communion with God moments, but I'm finding it really a fruitful way to do what I do. I it's, it's such a blessing that you're writing about this, and that you and your wife are teaching about this, because I think most people would go, Oh, that's such a great idea. I believe in that. But it's hard to know how to make that turn around the corner. Yeah, so good segue to the chapter. I think it's chapter five that you wrote about how an unhurried life can help us resist temptation. But as we were talking about the not having the last word not having to be right, that temptation is not just about the compulsion to do something that we don't want to do. But it can also be a compulsion to have to do something like to cling or to be attached to looking right, having the right answer having the last word and the point I wanted to make is that all of those are part of that grasping. It doesn't have to be grasping after pornography or food or alcohol or gambling, but it can be something like in every conversation, I need to make sure that I get my point of Cross and that you really respect me. And that that can be as much as a compulsion, but we don't typically think of it as temptation. Yeah, I, I know, at least in some seasons in my life, I envision temptation as a thing. I'm trying to resist not doing this bad thing I shouldn't do. And that's maybe the most obvious version. But I think a lot of ways you know, a think of Jesus as unhurried as it relates to temptation, I'm they're talking about the, the encounter with the tempter, in the wilderness after his 40 days of fasting. And again, you know, Jesus, his resistance is a resistance to letting someone else to find what his life should be about. Instead of the Father's way of defining what his life is, and what his mission is, someone else is trying to define it. That's the temptation that I find myself resisting. Now, I live in a culture that's trying to tell me what the good life is. I even sometimes live in certain organizational environments that's trying to tell me what the good life is. But in fact, my life is in God. That sounds maybe superduper religious or something. But it's a simple reality. My life is not defined by something I'm trying to get out there. thing I'm trying to achieve, someone I'm trying to impress, so that my life is then instead of now my life is now grace is now God is now I am now the opportunity, the only one I can work on is now it's all here. Temptation has a way of sorting, trying to convince me that what I desperately need isn't here. Now yet, I got to go clean for it, I got a grant for it, I've got to run after it. I've got to chase it. I've got to grab it. Actually, what Jesus says is essentially in all his ways of responding to the temptress, but the father is caring for me quite well. And I don't need anything from you, that I don't already have in the Father. And I think that that gets more to the center of the nature of my own temptations now, because we're all tempted, we continue to be in this lifetime of being able to see that what I desperately need is not something else somewhere else. God is not elsewhere. God's right here. It says, If Jesus was saying, why would I want to turn stones to bread when everything I need is right here. But in order to have everything that's right here, I need to be right here. And take on the stones that turn into bread means I've got to be somewhere other than here. Yeah, no, absolutely. So there's a real simplicity. That's one of the things I love about this journey of trying to follow Jesus unhurried way that I think what I'd like to think is that the trajectory of spiritual growth is in the direction of simplicity, rather than in the direction of complexity. Now, you have to move through complexity? Of course you do. But there's a kind of simplicity that I think is beautiful and unhurried. And I think that Jesus really does model for us, I find it compelling. It's so compelling. Every time I talk with someone like you who's writing and teaching in this, I just feel a hunger and a thirst awakened in me, because it's something that I still so desperately need. So let's shift gears a little in the second half or so of your book. I think chapter seven ish. You shift to the different facets and ways that that God brings opportunities for the unhurried life and you kind of made bookends there the way I saw it, and it was like one book and was Sabbath. And that's what I would think of as an obvious one. So I'm glad you started there. But then it totally took me by surprise that one of the ways that God allows us to live in an unhurried life is eternity. Like yeah, of course, like eternity is going to be really unhurried. Yeah. So unpack just those different aspects of because you didn't say okay, do Lectio Divina or do centering prayer? You went more macro than that, which I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. Yeah. I think my hope was to give a kind of vision for this as a way of life we consider and so yeah, certainly Sabbath. You can talk about Sabbath as a practice that involves a week, you know, a daily or weekly day and of resting and all of that, but you can also think of set birth as a vision of life. And in that chapter, one of the things I was trying to get at was, you know, I think in our culture, resting is sort of seen as A negative, it's the moment when you don't work. So you want to avoid that at all costs, you only stay in resting as long as you need to, to get back to work. So it's a negative, it's not, it's a minus sign next to work. That's what rest is. Where is the biblical vision of of rest, as Sabbath is something robust? It's unhurried in the spirit of love. It's, it's at the pace of love. It's at the pace of peace. It's at the pace of joy. And we said earlier, the pace of grace, that rest is the place where I remember who I am. And then I can move into my work to express who I am. But I live in a culture that tells me I got to prove who I am. And so rest is an exercise in non existence, if that's what I think about my I'd say that rust is an exercise in non existence, if that's how I think about it. Exactly. In other words, if I am what I do, then if I do nothing, the equation is simple, I am nothing. If I am what I have, if I'm in a moment where I am not acquiring things, then I have nothing, I am nothing. And if I am in a moment where I'm not impressing other people with my communication skills, or my accomplishments or whatever, in that moment, if I am what others say about me, then I'm nothing. So that's why there's a vision thing here there's there's the sense that I need to realize Sabbath is a positive, it's like fertile soil, in which good work grows, rather than at best, a battery charger to get me revved back up for the next season of working. So that's, to me, that's the connection that that Sabbath is or resting is the place where I remember who I am. We're in the moment where I'm not doing things and acquiring things, and impressing people. God can just say, Alan, I love you right now, before you impress anybody, before you accomplish anything before you require anything right now, I love you. That's the moment when unconditional love can be expressed. If I'm frantically busily doing stuff all the time for God. And then he says, I love you. Part of me says, Well, of course you do. You're so lucky to have me I'm so faithful. And I'm so busy doing all this great stuff for you. But the moment of solitude or silence or secrecy, the moment where I step away, that's the moment when God's I love you just meets me at a place of receptivity. And I just, I remember who I am. So that's what that's the connection with unhurried is, then my work becomes an expression of it. And I work from the abundance of I'm loved, and I'm treasured, and I'm honored. And then I work instead of I work. So I hope somehow I'll be honored and valued and affirmed. Oh, that's so so good. So that's the Sabbath, keep going. We don't have to go through all the chapters, but the different ways that God reveals and Jesus revealed these different rhythms. Yeah. So you'd mentioned the other one, you've mentioned, the book ends and the idea of eternal life. I remember when I first proposed the outline, I had this really genius idea that, you know, eternal life, there's the ultimate and unhurried life. And that was the hardest chapter to write. Because I really had to live into it. There's still a lot of me that thought of eternal life as mostly a future reality after this lifetime ends. And, you know, of course, John 17, when Jesus says, This is eternal life that they know you and the one you've sent, so instead of it being mostly about some future moment in time and place, it's a relational reality. And so I think, for me, what it's what it's been is realizing, I am now living in eternal life. And this human physical lifetime, may last 7080 90 100 years, I don't know how long it'll last. But that's not the extent of my life, I am now living my eternal life already. And this human experience is just one moment in that span. There's something about that vision that slows me down in a holy way. It doesn't slow me down in an unholy unproductive, disengaged way. It sort of makes me feel hopeful that I don't have that impatience is not going to get something good done. That impatience is always going to be getting in the way of what I think God wants to do in me. So I love the idea that eternal life is a way of seeing my life right now. That helps slow me down, you know, in the way I live and in the way I relate in the way I work. As we start to wrap up, I just want to say to everybody listening that you need to get this book in unhurried life. And Alan, what is Your website. Yeah, so they can find out more about us and what we do at unhurried living.com. Okay, unhurried living.com. I just want to encourage everybody to check that out and to check out the newly revised version of an unhurried life. At the end, you give some really practical ideas and suggestions for practice, or people to enter into solitude and silence and to begin to get into rhythms that are unhurried. Can you just maybe give a handful of those? Yeah. So, you know, in our little appendix, we call it five unhurried minutes. And so the irony is, you know, five, that sounds hurried, you know, but I often think that, you know, doesn't take you days and days to slow down, you can learn to slow down even just in a moment. So real simple things like take five minutes. And imagine a beautiful scene of maybe somewhere you've been a year ago before, all of this COVID-19 reality of not now we don't get on planes. And now we don't meet in groups, we had the treat of visiting Italy and Spain. And in my mind, I can still picture some of the settings that we found ourselves in. And so just taking five minutes to remember, even visually a beautiful place that you've been, or to take a moment and do something physical. I've been doing more during the season where I, you know, I'm not getting out like I normally would, I'm taking little five minute walks. Chit or I'm going into my backyard like right now I can look in my backyard, and I see the bird feeder. And I see a bunch of finches going at some food I put out earlier today. And sometimes I'll take five minutes and just look at birds, Jesus suggested it, he thought it was a good idea. He thought maybe I would learn to stop being so anxious, which is one of my struggles, if I noticed that birds never seem to be for want of what they need. And in fact, they're right here in my backyard. Or sometimes I'll just stop for five minutes. And I'll just take some deep, deep breaths. And like the first couple, I realize that some of them are getting much past, you know, just below my neck. It's like, okay, I think I'm a little tense here, I think I'm not as relaxed and unhurried, as I like to talk about, you know, so that has proven to be really helpful. I've sometimes just taken a moment, and it's just, I think a lot start, but to listen to a full song, not as background music, but to actually enter into a 345 minute song, and just let the music of it and maybe if it's if it's the lyrics, but the message of it just wash over me, let it be a moment of enjoyment. Let it be a moment of resting. So these are a lot of just little simple five minute things that I think we can sometimes do to slow down our inner pace, you know, in the midst of a busy day. You know, what I love about that is, they're surprisingly non religious. And I can picture Jesus, you know, living all 33 years of his life doing that, paying attention to the grain in the wood that he was building a table with. And just noticing it not even having some wonderful appreciation and then praising God for the green and wood but just paying attention. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's, we talk a contemplative life is just a life of seeing its life. What is it's noticing the moments and think Jesus was an absolute master of that, and I'm sure glad to be following him and learning from him in that. Well, Alan, thank you very much for this conversation for your time and for your wisdom and for the encouragement to me and to all of us, Alan and Jim fatling and their ministry of unhurried living. Thanks a lot, brother. Thank you, Michael. It's a real treat to be with you. So thank you for listening to another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. What we're all about is helping couples and individuals get unstuck. You know how some people go to counseling or marriage therapy for months or even years and never really get anywhere. Our intensive programs help clients get unstuck in as little as two weeks. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com