Slowness is a Spiritual Discipline

From the series: Making Space at the Table: The Slow, Holy Work

“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you...”
—2 Peter 3:9 (NRSV)

We live in a culture of speed. Faster delivery, faster decisions, faster progress. Even in the Church, we sometimes speak of inclusion and justice in terms borrowed from marketing: quick wins, rollouts, optics. But the kind of change the Gospel calls for cannot be rushed. Inclusion is not a project. It is a process. And slowness, in this sense, is not a failing. It is a spiritual discipline.

The slow, holy work of making space at the table is not slow because God is reluctant. It is slow because people are. Systems take time to shift. Hearts take even longer. We want transformation to be immediate—but even resurrection took three days.

Slowness isn’t passivity. It’s attentiveness. It’s moving at the pace of relationship, repentance, and real love. The God who waits for the prodigal does not shout down the road. He stands watching. Waiting. Ready.

Christianity is an embodied faith. The Incarnation is not an idea—it is God taking time to grow inside Mary, to be born, to learn to walk and speak. Christ didn’t rush to Calvary. He lived three decades of ordinary human life before his public ministry began. He walked. He sat. He waited with friends, with children, with outcasts.

Time matters. And bodies need time. For neurodivergent people, disabled people, traumatised people, and anyone who doesn’t fit the fast pace of "normal" society, slowness can be not only necessary but sacred. A community that honours slow processes—slow speech, slow trust, slow change—is a community that honours the humanity of its members.

In his book The Three Mile an Hour God, Kosuke Koyama writes:

“Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed... It is the speed we walk—and therefore the speed the love of God walks.”¹

God walks. And if we want to walk with God, we must slow down.

Many churches seeking to become more inclusive fall into the trap of urgency. We announce inclusion before we build structures of support. We draft statements before we have listened well. We seek visible outcomes before we've done invisible repair. But as every gardener knows, there is no shortcut to fruitfulness. Soil must be tended. Seeds must rest in darkness. Roots must take hold unseen.

The work of making space takes time because it involves more than inviting people in. It involves reshaping the whole table: who sets it, how it’s decorated, what voices are heard, what norms are unquestioned. That kind of change cannot be achieved with bullet points or press releases.

Slowness demands trust. And trust takes time. Especially for those who have been historically excluded or harmed by the Church, rushing can feel like a repetition of the harm itself: “We want you here—but on our timeline. At our speed. In ways we can control.”

Slowness creates the space for actual healing.

In many ways, those who are excluded by fast systems become prophets of slowness. The autistic child who needs more time to process language. The chronically ill person whose schedule is governed by flare-ups. The elder who moves more slowly than the rest of the congregation. The grieving parishioner who cannot "move on" by next Sunday. They are not obstacles to inclusion—they are our teachers.

In her theology of disability, Nancy Eiesland speaks of Christ as the disabled God—present not in the removal of bodily difference, but in solidarity with it.² Slowness is not something to overcome. It is something to enter into.

And in liturgy, we already have the tools for this. The Church keeps time differently. It has a liturgical year. It marks Advent with waiting. It holds vigils through the night. The Eucharist itself is slow: gathering, confession, peace, prayer, silence, blessing. It is not efficient—but it is true.

We are invited to keep time with the Spirit, not with the market.

Scripture is full of divine slowness. The slow unfolding of God’s promises to Abraham. The forty years in the wilderness. The long wait for the Messiah. And still, God is not in a hurry. The second letter of Peter, written to early Christians questioning the delay of Christ’s return, reminds them: The Lord is not slow… but is patient. God’s slowness is mercy.

We live in a Church that often confuses speed with faithfulness. But the Kingdom of God is like a seed, Jesus says. It grows silently, underground. And we are called to wait with it. To tend it. To trust that what we cannot see is still being made new.

Slowness does not mean nothing is happening. It means we are choosing not to force what must be cultivated. We are choosing not to perform welcome but to become it.

What if we made slowness part of our liturgical imagination?
What if pastoral care was measured not in outcomes but in endurance?
What if we saw listening not as a delay to action but as action itself?

Making space at the table will take time. It will be uncomfortable. People will misunderstand. Some will leave. Some will push back. But faithfulness is not proven by speed. It is proven by love.

And love is slow.

References

1. Kosuke Koyama, The Three Mile an Hour God, Orbis Books, 1979.

2. Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability, Abingdon Press, 1994.