Below is an excerpt from A More Beautiful Way to Live: Nine Practices to Unlearn Habits of Anxiety, Fear, and Urgency by Bethaney Wilksonson. This is one of our book club picks for the summer of 2026. We invite you to buy the book on bookshop.org or your local bookstore, and spend time with us cultivating groundedness, presence, and acceptance to sustain us as we rebuild a just world. See the rest of our summer book club picks here.
Slow time is every moment we choose to be fully present and radically attentive to life’s unfolding in the here and now. It refers to what we take in not only through our sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch but also through our emotional awareness, our spiritual sensitivity, and our willingness to look inside ourselves and be honest about what’s really going on.
Slow time can be literal, meaning specific times during the day or week that we set aside to contemplate, to meditate, or to pray. Slow time can also be metaphysical and perhaps otherworldly.
Author and spiritual guide Christine Valters Paintner, in her book Sacred Time, draws a beautiful distinction between the Greek expressions of kronos time and kairos time. Kronos, from which we derive the word “chronological,” speaks to the daily, forward- moving, linear tick of the clock. The 1-2-3-4…horizontal cadence of our days. It is the type of time we measure and the form of time to which we most often respond.
Kairos time is an altogether different reality. Kairos time is those moments when heaven touches earth. It is time outside of time. It’s the powerful in-breaking of new life when a baby is born into the world. It’s the expansive timelessness one experiences in a cathedral during a prayerful liturgy. Kairos moments are often marked by mystery and a touch of the divine. When we enter kairos time, we lose sight of the forward-moving ticktock of our watches and clocks.
Both kronos and kairos offer us opportunities to slow down our lives. Whether we create slow time by scheduling it (kronos) or we encounter slow time because heaven has touched earth (kairos), both are invitations to a more connected and less worried life.
It’s important to know that embracing slow time isn’t about feel-good days of relaxation at the beach, though I love those. It’s about slowing to a pace that allows us to face reality, even when it’s hard. I used to believe that “being present” meant paying attention to only the good things happening in and around me— keeping a record of the positive emotions I felt, the healthy relationships I was in, and the celebration-worthy events I experienced.
While it is good and worthwhile to be attentive to all that is life-giving, author and researcher Brené Brown reminds us that we cannot selectively numb, because to resist life’s heartache is to resist life’s joy. We cannot have one without the other. Embracing slow time is an opportunity to confront even life’s most challenging realities and to meet those moments with the fullness of our attention.
This is an excerpt from A More Beautiful Way to Live: Nine Practices to Unlearn Habits of Anxiety, Fear, and Urgency from Brazos Press. (Used by permission. All rights reserved.)
Available Everywhere Now – Order Your Copy Here.
About the book:
Weaving together rich storytelling and wisdom inspired by nature, she shares nine contemplative practices intended to help you:
● cultivate rhythms of rest, healing, and deep connection;
● embrace a slower, gentler, and more life-giving pace;
● unlearn habits of anxiety, fear, and urgency; and
● show up wholeheartedly for what matters most to you.
With a foreword by Kaitlin B. Curtice, this book is an invitation to those longing for a slower, deeper, and more meaningful way to live.
Bethaney Wilkinson is an author, workshop facilitator, and spiritual director rooted in rural middle Georgia, where she lives with her husband Alex and their two dogs, Isla and Bear. She has an MA in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and a BA in educational studies from Emory University, and is a certified spiritual director through the Parish Resource Center. She is the author of A More Beautiful Way to Live: Nine Practices to Unlearn Habits of Anxiety, Fear, and Urgency and is the pen behind the Substack publication, The Inner Terrain.
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