Unfinished Quilts & Half Learned Lessons

The world seems to keep flying by. Time feels like it goes faster and faster each day. And here’s the strange part: I want so badly to slow down, but I feel like I can’t even keep up with slowing down. How does that even make sense?

Living slow in a rapid-paced world… is it even possible to balance those things? I find myself trying to oppose the current, like when you’re in a lazy river and you try to swim backwards… it often feels near impossible. But I think it’s not so much about going the opposite direction as it is about letting yourself plant your feet and stay put for a little while. Slow living feels like going backwards, but perhaps it’s the only thing that will move us forward in a healthy and sustainable way.

Knowing when to adapt versus when to stay grounded is tough. Technology moves faster than we can, and despite my promise to embrace every new wave, my perspective has changed. Age brings the wisdom that sometimes there’s a place for resistance.

I remember being taught in church the importance of being intentional about who you surround yourself with — and that it was wise to always hold close someone older in your life and someone younger. A Paul: someone wiser, a little further down the road from you, and a Timothy: someone coming up behind you that you get to pour into. Even at a young age, that resonated with me.

Maybe that’s what this season calls for: the memory of a slower world — the one I grew up in, before everything was instant — and the sense that it knew something we’ve forgotten, along with the humility to listen to the ones coming up behind me, who are saying something similar in a new way. As elder (ew) Millennials, we have the unique privilege of bridging the pre- and post-internet worlds. And while I often find myself worried about what the world will look like for the kids in my life, Gen Z gives me hope. They aren’t just following in our footsteps — a lot of them are logging off and choosing connection and real life over the endless scroll, and they might be the ones reminding me how.

So, the Gathered Thread is my public attempt at living slow. It’s giving me the space to wonder. This summer, although it’s half over, I want to take some time to pause, allow things to float by so I can take in my surroundings a little more.

Two years ago I took up sewing. I was making my own clothes, and I even began a quilting class with my mom (and never finished it). I have a love-hate relationship with sewing often because I just wanted to get to the finished product — I didn’t always enjoy getting there. So I’ve taken a bit of a break, not knowing where to begin again, and not knowing how to stay consistent and find joy in the process.

Maybe that’s the whole thing, though. Maybe slow living is never going to be a finished product I could hold up and call done. Maybe it’s just this: planting my feet for a moment, feeling the water run past instead of fighting it, and starting again whenever I drift. Not doing it perfectly — just doing it again tomorrow.

So here’s to a summer that’s already half over. To unfinished quilts and half-learned lessons. To feeling the current instead of swimming against it, and finding a little joy in the process… even when the process is slow.