There’s this voice in my head recently that’s being whispering slow down. I think I’ve been slowing down these last few months, taking less academic credits and spending more time making and sleeping. But still the voice still says, slower. 

I think it means slow enough to ramble in the mist, which I haven’t been doing.

I think it means slow enough to notice the reflection in raindrops before they drip off branches. 

I think it means slow enough to kindle a fire in the hearth and watching it burn until I can see deep ancestors seated at their winter hearths doing the same. 

I think it means slow enough for unconditionally leaning into sleep and cups of tea.

It means finishing my yule gifts fireside. 

 And drinking decadent, spicy chocolate with my mother. And taking the time to watch snow fall. 

It means making the things that I need, when I can, from as close as I can get to start to as close as I can get to finish, instead of looking for them online first. It means loving every twist and drop and stitch because it is born of my hands, and is thus proof of magic and alchemy. Because it tells about the people that I love and the place that it comes from, and it echoes with story and song. Because that is the most potent medicine I can make. 

There is a voice that lives in the marrow of my bones. It comes from the rocks that ring Grandmother’s cook fire, who have become pebbles and dust under the weight of millennia.

This gentle, relentless voice, who day dreams in spring and grows drunk on the fruit and flowers of summer. Who knows intimately the dance and long days of harvest season, who begins to wake as the leaves turn. Who rises as the days grow darker and invites me to its hearth, who smiles in ancient remembrance when I skin my knees on the folly of youth, who extends its wizened hands and whispers slower.

When I visit the Grandmother who lives in time immemorial and ask her if I’m there yet, she just smiles because I’m asking a question that I already know the answer to. (The answer, by the way, is no. But I am getting closer.) 

I am working on slowing down because when I slow down the world opens up in all her glory and magic. And I think that this can be true for others too, however we must first and foremost create change in ourselves if we hope to create change on a larger scale. (Though the two are often synchronous.)

Radically slowing down does not have to mean literally acting in slow motion. The way I see it,  it simply engaging with the world with deep intention and integrity. It means reciprocally engaging with time as an entity of possibility for awe some experience instead of seeing it as a linear enemy. It means seeing time as the large infinity of little moments in life before the smaller infinity of big ones. 

I don’t know about you, but when I have lived like that- not really giving a fig about linear time- the world was full of wonder. Joyful hours passed in eternal seconds, months in weeks, and weeks in years. In summer, I saw fairies flit on warm breezes. In winter, it was truly Saint Nicholas, and his flying sleigh, who went dashing from our doorstep, instead of a kindly neighbor. I looked forwards to the changing of the moon because it meant the revealing of a new piece of art on our calendar, and the moon seemed to make my mother happy.

There are many many arguments for slow living. For slow fashion, for seasonal eating. For living with intention. Many of them have to do with environmental health, with mental and physical health, with happiness. I could go on about the importance of slowing down, but I hope that it is something that you, dear reader, choose for yourself, because you believe in hope and everyday magic, and because you can hear the voice of your deep ancestors calling. 

 My wish for you is that you may follow your intuition and heart unconditionally and without compromise and revel in the wonder that follows. 

With Love,

Juniper