I gotta' be honest today: I feel stuck.

Stuck about how to write anything that means anything about what the world feels like right now.

Stuck about how honest and vulnerable to be about the things I am pondering these days, the things that are causing me angst, giving me pause, making me reconsider choices.

Stuck about how to write words about faith that don't feel trite and silly, combative and defensive. In my opinion, American Christianity has become, in some places, an inverse of itself. Much of what I witness being done and said in Jesus' name feels like the polar opposite of the Jesus I have studied my whole life. I am stunned into speechlessness time and time again.

So, I simply haven't written.

How to write when words feel like ash in my mouth? When thoughts swirl and don't land? When my nervous system is on high alert against a creeping sense of danger?

For now, I will leave you with a quote from my reading these days. Because sometimes, other people's words are all we have.

Thank God for other people's words.

I have been reading a book about the difference between producing and creating. The contrast between seeing oneself primarily as a producer as opposed to a creator, a maker. At this stage of the game, I am feeling compelled to jump off the production train in order to ramble on the slow path of creation, of making goodness, rather than hustling to prove I "count" in the grand scheme that is free-market capitalism. Most of my work, to be honest, has never counted for much in the grand scheme of capitalism anyway. Much meaningful work doesn't.

So I am slowing myself in order to seek peace in a world spiraling into chaos. Not to seek peace solely for my sake, although I see that as a worthy goal. But to seek peace so that right action can spring from a grounded, centered place as opposed to springing from fear or hatred or the simple desire to do something. To do anything.

I find myself asking the same question over and again: Why don't we slow down?

This is what the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said: "Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself."

There it is. There's the answer.

We run because we are running from ourselves.

I run because I am running from myself. So do you, I bet. I wonder what might happen if we stopped running.

Attempting to give up haste in our hasty world feels like a fools errand.

Call me a fool.

Photo by Freddy Castro on Unsplash