Slowing Down in an InstaPot World

Mothers’ Day was three days ago. Like every good husband, I purchased my wife a gift on behalf of the kids. Even more, I purchased Lindsay an InstaPot, because nothing says, “Honey, I love you and am thankful for everything you do (which is pretty much everything) than a kitchen appliance." No need for pampering, clothing, or days away - I bought my wife an InstaPot (the big one), and she was thrilled (seriously, she was). And just to be fair, my close friend bought his wife a vacuum.

I do not know if you know how an InstaPot works, but it is true to its name. The pot does kitchen magic, and this invention will turn the tides of mealtime. This is a technology of significance. And now just like my kids will never understand making a mix-tape or a parent asking a child to get up and “turn the channel", now they will never understand “slow-cooked meats.”

Tonight I christened the InstaPot with a full rack of ribs granted to us by a grass-fed, pampered pig named Percy. The meat cost more than the pot, and I am thankful this swine gave its life for our table.  In less than forty-five minutes from removing this little piggy from the refrigerator, I had succulent sow falling from my fingers. 

I thought a computer in my pocket was something to behold, but the power of an InstaPot to deliver protein goodness in minutes is unfathomable. Peter would have been out of his mind if he knew pig and other creeping things could be both this tasty and this quick (Acts 10). Imagine the sermon Peter would have preached following the miracle of quickly cooked unclean meats! Pentecost would have been forgotten.

Houston, I now have a problem. I am becoming a pilgrim. The practice of the pilgrim is to slow down, to choose a pace at which you can notice the world around you. In his little book, The Pilgrim, Paulo Coehlo outlines seven exercises for the pilgrim. The first exercise is the Speed Exercise. Pilgrims often enter the process of walking too quickly and develop blisters and pain. We take our worldly habits of finishing quickly into our spiritual pilgrimage, which is a recipe for failure. Coelho learns the way of speed early in his own pilgrimage.

Coelho writes,

Do the Speed Exercise: Walk for twenty minutes at half the speed at which you normally walk. Pay attention to the details, people, and surroundings. The best time to do this is after lunch. Repeat the exercise for seven days….

“Don’t make a torture out of this exercise, because it wasn’t meant to be that…try to find pleasure in a speed that you’re not used to. Changing the way you do routine things allows a new person to grow inside of you. But when all is said and done, you’re the one who must decide how you handle it.”

Coelho narrates how the exercise impacted him. He writes,

The cold — about which I had already forgotten — returned, and I looked at Petrus [my guide] with

desperation. But he paid no attention; he got up, grabbed his knapsack, and began to walk the two

hundred meters to the village with an exasperating slowness. At first, I looked only in the direction of

the tavern, a small, ancient, two-story building with a wooden sign hanging above the door. We were

so close that I could even read the year when the tavern had been built: 1652. We were moving, but it

seemed as if we had not left our original spot. Petrus placed one foot in front of the other very slowly,

and I did the same. I took my watch from my knapsack and strapped it on my wrist.

“It’s going to be worse that way,” he said, “because time isn’t something that always proceeds at

the same pace. It is we who determine how quickly time passes.”

I began to look at my watch every minute and found that he was right. The more I looked at it, the more slowly the minutes passed. I decided to take his advice, and I put the watch back in my knapsack. I tried to pay more attention to the Road, the plain, and the stones I stepped on, but I kept

looking ahead to the tavern — and I was convinced that we hadn’t moved at all. I thought about telling myself some stories, but the exercise was making me anxious, and I couldn’t concentrate. When I couldn’t resist any longer and took my watch out again, only eleven minutes had passed.

I listened to Coelho’s book on Audible. I realized several hours in, and quite a ways past the description of this exercise, that I was listening to Coelho’s tale at one-and-a-half times the normal speed. It’s not yet chipmunk speed but it is more efficient than the slowness of normal audiobooks. I tried to listen at both half speed (.5x) and normal speed (1.0x). Who can process that slowly? I couldn’t do it for more than a few seconds. It was just too slow.

Pilgrims' slow down. I have spent the last years in an InstaPot quickly responding to emails, finishing projects, teaching courses, and having conversations. Haste is not a Christian virtue; Rowan Williams recently said, “the problem with purity is haste." The pilgrim is seeking connection to the essence of our communion with God. This isn’t flashes of light or hasty pudding; it is a still and quiet, largely uneventful discovery. Haste is its enemy.

I love the InstaPot. I am an InstaPot guy! Trying to do anything at half the speed of normal will be a brutal test of my will. Even so, the One calling me to walk is more likely to keep up if I slow down.