Taking time to slow down

SOUL FOOD

It was in early June, around the time I first noticed I’d been

lost in a bleak landscape of headlines, that I wrote a few words from

St. Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi on a three-by-five card

and slipped it into my purse.

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and

supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to

God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will

guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

I’d been making my requests known to God with a vengeance, anxious

for everything, forgetful of thanksgiving. Pessimism guarded my heart

and my mind, not peace. It was high time, I realized, to change the

guard.

I began to make a list of small things, ordinary things,

commonplace splendid things, the everyday blessings of my life I take

for granted, time and again.

The list grew as long as the days of summer: the mist of the

morning, good coffee, fresh berries, my husband and family, the ocean

breeze at dusk, a hummingbird at the sage, our friends and good

neighbors, my sweet cat Wayne and the setting sun.

It was about then that I met Terry Marotta. I went to Pittsburgh

to spend a weekend with some members of the National Society of

Newspaper Columnists during its 26th annual conference.

One morning while I sat listening to a panel of speakers, I looked

up and there she was, standing in the doorway. I eyed her the way a

baby eyes another baby -- a kindred spirit. She was wearing a summer

dress and a fedora hat. She looked tired and gleeful, like a child in

need of a nap but unwilling to miss a lick of fun.

I offered her the chair next to mine. She introduced herself in a

hoarse New England accent. She was road-weary, she said, and short of

sleep. She’d been driving northeast highways to introduce her new

book at scatterings of book-signings.

Marotta writes a syndicated column. She has collected some of the

stories, wrung from the fabric of her life, in two books. I read one,

“Vacationing In My Driveway,” as I flew home from that weekend.

The book isn’t meant to be read all at once; it’s an anthology of

52 stories, one for each week of the year. But I doubt Marotta would

be surprised that is what I did.

Because Marotta believes that people are inclined to hurry too

much. She says she knows this because she once did, too, until she

started to think in earnest of living in a different way.

Her stories are short and unhurried, like an afternoon nap or a

vacation taken where she finds it -- in her driveway. The stories are

meant to slow us down, too.

They call on memories, sweet and bittersweet. They take up the

moment like a glass of good wine. They ease toward rich tomorrows.

Marotta, with ancestors from Ireland, grew up Roman Catholic. She

once thought of going to divinity school.

So it didn’t surprise me to find God in between the lines of her

stories, and sometimes in them.

He is there when she writes, “Thank you, God, for raspberries and

health restored, and another year on your beautiful earth.”

He’s there, too, when she writes, “Let yourself sit a moment,

parked on any least square of earth or patch of asphalt, suddenly

and ecstatically alive -- on vacation -- and ready to bless this life

and call it good.”

With thanksgiving. And in peace.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for

as long as she can remember. She can be reached at

[email protected].