A Slow Soul in a Fast World

A few months ago I wrote about the Ignatian practice of "indifference."

Again, the basic idea of Ignatian indifference is to let go of anything in the world that interferes with our love and service of God and others. You night not like the word "indifference," but indifference isn't about about emotional resignation and detachment. Indifference is about discernment.

As I've noted before, most of us have an instinctive hungry, greedy, acquisitive stance in relation to the world. We're rushed, restless, addicted, distracted, triggered, greedy, competitive, jealous, and on and on. We live automatically and reactively, our hearts pulled this way and that.

Given that situation, indifference involves a pause. Indifference is about cultivating a season and space of discernment between the world and our response to the world.  Indifference isn't about detachment, resignation, or apathy. Ignatian indifference is a season to survey our hearts, creating the time and space to think about how things in the world are drawing us either closer or further away from God.

Now, as I've come to work on developing this capacity of indifference I've come to notice this about my struggles.

Specifically, a lot of my struggles have to do with the pace and timing of my inner life and the world happening around me. The world comes at you fast. And my natural inclination is to react to that rushing, oncoming traffic rapidly and quickly. I meet speed for speed. The world is rushing at me and my inner life speeds up to match it.

The problem is, when my inner life speeds up I lose the capacity for indifference. There is no pause, so space and season of reflective discernment. Instead, I act impulsively, instinctively, and unthoughtfully.

In short, in trying to match the speed of the world my inner life is going too fast. I need to slow down.

All that to say, I've come to think of the practice of indifference as a practice of managing the speed of my inner life in relation to the speed of the world. The world moves fast and the world comes at you fast, and the temptation is to match that speed, to think and react  quickly. Indifference is slowing the speed of your inner life so that when life comes at you you're going slow enough to ponder, pray, reflect, and think things through. Indifference refuses to meet speed for speed, refuses to match the pace of the world.

Indifference is cultivating a slow soul in a fast world.

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