Arabella has also invited me to her spinning group, The Texas Twisters, which is a fabulous group of fiber-spinning, artistic, and lovely women who get together once a week and spin for hours and hours. It’s heavenly. Today we were a fairly small group (about 9), and we spent several hours together laughing, sharing, and sometimes just quietly spinning.
It occurred to me again today that although I am glad spinning is my hobby and not a requirement of my daily life, we have definitely traded something valuable for our freedom. Community, intimacy, slow hours together instead of a full-bore constant pace….these are the gems we have traded for our modernity. On any given day, we might shrug and move on, happy in our freedoms. But sometimes, just sometimes, I get a glimpse of the beauty of a slower-paced, less materialistic, more careful life, and I think I miss it.
The Spinning Universe 
We did have a good time today! We are so glad to have you with us, too. I think you may be on to something, with the slower pace of life thought.
No need to miss the slower, less materialistic, side of life. Just change the one you have! We have (my husband and I), and wonder why we didn’t long ago. Not sure about the “slower” part; I seem to be running just as hard. But it doesn’t feel like the rat race because I’m loving every minute of it!
Your comments today and your observations on the human condition come at a moment where I could not be more at odds with it myself. Today I get myself all worked up into an angry fit of hostility and what could best be described as outright rage an literally nothing, simply because the traffic was not moving to suit me and my timelines in the rain today. It occurred to me in the hours I spent sulking after retreating home defeated by my own inner drive that on any other day I would have simply sat and enjoyed listening to the rain. I LOVE the rain (I especially love thunder and lightening) and enjoy the sound and and frequently compelled to want to go out and dance in the rain. But today it was my nemesis. The thing that prevented me from doing the ten things I wanted to do squeeze into a single 12 hour period. Something I really do love quite a bit became my enemy and no one’s hand by my own… That truly gives me pause, and makes me wish for a simpler time…
I think I know exactly what you mean. For 47 years now, I have been looking for what I call “the pace of peace.” I’m narrowing down what it ISN’T, simply from living and reflecting. Over the last year, and even possibly since beginning to spin, I feel like I am getting closer to what the pace of peace is for me, internally.
You are close, too. When you realize that what you gave up (the beauty of listening to what you love) in order to feel justified in a fleeting (and destructive) emotion, that means next time it rains, you are closer to stopping all else, and enjoying it.
Love you, John,
Teresa
And so, I am reminded of several things for which I am truly grateful: a small paperback, “Sabbath Rest,” which marked a new beginning in my own frantic life; knitting which is always with me to ease the “misery factor” propelled by Dallas traffic of every sort; the sweet nectar of repetitive rhythmical motion of which I drink voraciously, as I engage my hands to the wheel, or the needles; and mostly, the Goodness and Grace which has been shed on me…. Us.
I think you know, Dear Lady, how I long, at times, for more strength to “go and do” but I am truly grateful for the gift of this illness in allowing me, even as it requires me, to sl-o-o-w down. Very slow often and really very good. Peaceful.