It has been a very long pause… long pause in blogging, writing diary and social networking. I started February with a great determination to get back to regular schedule of weekly posts and then it happened. Someone very close to me was facing a difficult situation when unexpectedly becoming a primary caregiver to his newborn baby while the baby’s mother was in the hospital for an extended period.

Suddenly everyone in the family was on a steep learning curve of managing a crisis mode while learning all about baby care – milk formulas, nappies, burping, tummy issues, baths, etc. I remember how “relieved” we felt after the pediatrician had the first monthly check-up and gave a good report. It did not help that all this happened during the Covid-19 pandemic when our “lives as we know it” got severely interrupted and most of normal routines had to stop. It added so many complications that I cannot even begin to describe.

But something else happened. An unexpected twist which I will try to put into words. It seemed that during the quarantine the word on the street or, in this case, the word online was “time”. We have time. We have more time. Finally we have got the time. We have been forced to stop from our rat race and now we have time for what really matters. With all the million suggestions in articles, podcasts, interviews and talks to describe, analyze and define what is it that really matters.

But to me it felt like I had lost the time. More precisely, like I was living outside the time. Like the time stood still. Until I realized that this is probably what living in the moment feels like. I was pushing the baby carriage for long walks in the park, smelling the spring in the air, watching how people keep the distance from each other but still prefer to walk where they can see each other. Besides time to listen to some uplifting and inspiring podcasts, I kept reflecting on how this little helpless baby is teaching me something very important. The baby could not speak but every time she looked at me I heard loudly – slow down! I could not fix the difficult situation that my loved ones were in, but through this sense of slowing down I was also sensing a lot of hope in the midst of confusion and pain.

Today I found the exact words I was looking for. In a beautiful little book titled “Living Gently in a Violent World”, theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes: “Peace takes time. Put even more strongly, peace creates time by its steadfast refusal to force the other to submit in the name of order. Peace is not a static state but an activity which requires constant attention and care. [..] So, peace is the process through which we make time our own rather than be determined by “events”over which, it is alleged, we have no control.”

That is exactly how I felt it and saw it – I was learning in a new way how to make personal and social peace through an activity which required constant attention and care. I mean literal attention and literal care. And I am not talking about mindfulness, meditation or any other spiritual practice to “slow us down”. I am talking about listening intently to the “weakest” and “slowest” members of our community.

I would like to think of myself as a very patient person, but the little daily things routinely remind me that I am not. I walk back and forth, while I wait for the public transportation, to “kill the time”. I listen to a podcast, while on the public transport, to “fill the time”. But God through a little baby was revealing to me how to “still the time”.

Because at the heart of “living more gently in a violent world” is the realization that I have all the time I need.

P.S. I borrowed the phrase of Stanly Hauerwas for the title of this post.  It was simply too good 🙂