Let us praise the one who created the tortoise!
God our Maker, we praise you for your creation:
for the green earth,
the blue skies and fresh waters.
We praise you for so many different forms of life,
from big animals to small and humble beings,
for the rapid leopard
as well as for the slow tortoise.
In this age of growing speed and unrest
we want to especially praise you
because in your wisdom you created the tortoise,
giving it a slow pace but a long life.
Let us consider the tortoise
learning the lesson it teaches.
Let us value slowness; let us learn patience,
respecting the rhythms of creation.
Steady our pace that we may more readily
consider it, learning new truths for our time.
Amen.
Luca M. Negro (adapted)
For many of us, it’s time which, of all commodities, is the most precious. Time is what we complain most about not having. Even when we live at a frenetic pace, there aren’t enough hours to pack everything in. So it’s all too easy to be tired, anxious and joyless. And it seems the human tendency to let the demands of daily life run us ragged was much the same in Jesus’ time. In fact, he tackled his listeners about it (Mt 6. 25-34). He advised them to ‘consider’ an exquisite lily or a bird on the wing. Paying close, unhurried attention to the natural world might help them to fuss less and trust more, he told them. To rebalance their priorities.
Luca M. Negro’s prayer similarly challenges our priorities, especially that of speed – so closely linked to time. He uses the tortoise to celebrate slowness just as Aesop had done in his famous fable centuries before: despite competing against an athletic hare, it was the slow and steady tortoise who won the race!
According to the writer Anne Lamott, the most spiritual and subversive human acts against our hyperactive culture are to rest and to laugh. So maybe if Jesus were here today he’d say, “Stop looking at your watches, phones, to-do lists! Stop worrying and hurrying! Consider the tortoise, moving so slowly through its life yet easily making one hundred years!”