One of the hardest parts about reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is witnessing the systematic degradation of a people. Page by page, Douglass patiently illustrates how dehumanization wasn’t an unfortunate bi-product of American slavery but an absolute necessity. Human nature is essentially buoyant; a society has to work hard—really hard—to keep an entire race underwater for centuries.
My students were cataloguing the ways masters sought to rub the indelible imago Dei out of their slaves, and a curious suggestion popped up: hurry. Douglass writes, “Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to eat it. We were often less than five minutes taking our meals.” But how exactly does hurry rob us of our humanity?
Constant hurry reflects a shift toward what Josef Pieper calls “total work”—an existence where work becomes all-consuming and all things become fuel for work. Who has time for lengthy meals? Sleep? Boardgames? Books? Staring at the fire? An internal voice scolds us: Consume whatever calories necessary, grab whatever guilty rest you must, but by all means get on with it! Back to work!
Often, that voice sounds like society, a boss, a teacher, or a parent. More often, that voice sounds like my own.
Hurry says it is not enough to simply be. We hurry because we must do.
But animals can do work. Machines and factories can do work too. Only the human has the gracious ability to more than do. The toilsome motion of the 18th century plantation was meant to prevent slaves from slowing down enough to enjoy being—that is, to be fully human.
It is our ability to delight in existence, Pieper reminds us, that sets us above the animals. It is unhurried contemplation—savoring of life and all that exists—that lifts our souls heavenward.
So here’s a horrifying suggestion: Maybe the reason you and I are hurrying all the time is to avoid the truth that there is nothing in our lives worth savoring. Hurry then becomes the thinly-veiled attempt to make up for the lack of quality in our lives with the sheer quantity of our work.
But maybe the real problem is that we don’t ever really slow down—we just hurry less. The reason we don’t see anything to savor is because we never sit at the dinner table for 20 straight minutes—let alone an hour or two.
We must realize that suppers are not times for a quick “refuel”—at home, church, or elsewhere. That’s slavery. Sonship sees the table as a place to luxuriate in being—to celebrate that we exist in a universe that does not need us, that we know the One who was, is, and is to come, and that we who were “once not a people” are now “God’s people” (1 Pt 2:10).
The Luxury of Pastry
Nothing is more extra than scratch-made pastries. It’s so much easier to buy pre-made puff pastry or croissant dough. Better yet, just buy pastries at the bakery. Besides, if the end goal is gluten-intake, why not just bake a loaf of bread and be done with it?
Pastry requires the folding and the rising and the folding and the rising and the folding. And then you have to make the fillings. And you have to brush with egg before you bake, and you have to brush with jam after you bake. And then there’s usually some sort of confectionary drizzle too. Is it really worth it?
Yes. A thousand times yes. Pastry should be homemade because pastry can be made at home. The inefficiency of it all only adds to its allure.
Men eat bread. Kings eat pastry. So, find yourself a good pastry recipe and feast like royalty around your table sometime soon.
Paul Hollywood’s Pain Aux Raisins is a fantastic place to start!