(Editor’s Note: Travis West’s book The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight, will be released on Tuesday, June 3. Travis has combined excerpts from a few chapters for us.

In his 1946 novel Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis introduced the world to a truly memorable character, marked by indefatigable passion. Zorba is a steward of life’s pleasures, living every moment to the absolute fullest. But he is also a man whose relationship to time once distorted his passion for life, resulting in devastation. In a moment of quiet reflection, Zorba tells a story that is a timeless parable about the dangers lurking in an approach to life that prioritizes speed, productivity, efficiency, and control as the central elements of a successful and important life. It happened one day as Zorba walked through a forest and chanced upon a butterfly just as it began to emerge from its chrysalis.

I waited a while, but it was too long appearing, and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could, and the miracle began to happen before my very eyes, faster than life. The case opened. The butterfly started slowly crawling out. And I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled. The wretched butterfly tried, with its whole trembling body, to unfold them. Bending over it I tried to help it with my breath, in vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently, and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand. That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience.[1]

Did you notice how Zorba’s relationship to time was the critical factor that caused his fascination with the butterfly’s transformation to devolve into a scene from an entomological horror film? It was not malice or rage that killed the butterfly, but hurry and impatience. A blindness to his own power enabled Zorba to do what he did. And while his intentions were pure, his longing for the butterfly to flourish dissolved in the face of his impatience. His intention had no bearing on the impact of his actions.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who finds this story convicting. We all know that rushing makes messes of things, but we still do it all the time. While it’s unlikely our rushing in the routines of life will lead to the kind of catastrophic outcome that befell Zorba’s butterfly, we nevertheless inflict little deaths on situations when we force them to acquiesce to our anxious timelines. We rush conversations by speaking over each other and abort connection; we rush while driving and put ourselves and others at risk; we rush intimacy and end up feeling disconnected and lonely; we rush to make a big purchase and end up with regret or in debt; we rush to advance at work and end up missing our children’s childhoods; we rush through our very lives and end up never truly living them.

I don’t think the point of Zorba’s story is that going fast or being impatient inevitably causes death and destruction. But it does invite us into careful and intentional reflection on our relationship with time—why we move at the pace we do, what motivates us to do so, and why we get so anxious and uncomfortable with things unfolding at their own pace.

Instead of prompting us to ask ourselves how productive or efficient we are with our time, Zorba’s parable encourages us to wrestle with a different set of questions. How can we live in such a way that helps those around us flourish? How can our actions bring life instead of death? What would it look like for our relationship with time to be shaped by the abundant and life-giving love of God, as opposed to the scarcity mindset and the more-bigger-faster approach of a consumerist society captivated by Benjamin Franklin’s (in)famous dictum that “time is money?”[2]

The Sabbath is a practice that can help us live our way into the answers to these questions. The Sabbath invitates us to slow down, become present, pay attention, take stock of our lives and our living, trust in the grace of God while extending grace to others and ourselves, and actively cultivate delight. Week after week, Sabbath living apprentices us to live beyond the diminishment of a time-is-money approach so we can embrace the subversive truth that time is love. But before we explore time is love we must come to terms with how time is money has impacted our living.

Time Is Money

Jesus said that “out of the overflow of our hearts, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). But I think it works in the reverse as well. Our speech—our grammar, syntax, the possible ranges of meaning in our words, etc.—shapes our hearts as well. And our hearts have been shaped by the language we use to speak about time. Our time vocabulary is steeped in economic metaphors. We spend time, save time, use time, waste time, borrow time, can’t afford the time, wonder if it’s worth the time, invest time, give time, set aside time, run out of time. Benjamin Franklin would be proud.

How are we forming our hearts by relating to time as money? The phrase comes from the fact that people get paid a wage based on time worked. The more hours you work, the more money you are paid. Since most everyone desires to have more money, and since rising costs make it feel like our money is always losing its value, it takes little effort to justify sacrificing more and more time on the altar of productivity to transform that time into cash. This creates a cycle of scarcity thinking that reinforces the dangers inherent in the metaphor of time as money.

The tentacles of time is money reach far beyond hourly-wage jobs, though. In fact, we are all impacted by a time-is-money approach to life, whether we have a job, are a student, a stay-at-home parent, or a retiree. Time is money is shorthand for a way of relating to time defined by the economy’s values of productivity and profit by way of efficiency and speed. It is a linguistic reflection of how we have conflated our relationship with both time and money into a singular experience of lack. We never have enough money, and we never have enough time. Our fear of scarcity drives our commitment to speed. “When time is money, speed equals more of it,”^[3] observes author Judith Shulevitz. And the commitment is hard to break.

Prioritizing speed and efficiency in response to the various and complex challenges we face in life can cause us or others harm. When we try to resolve life’s complexities by increasing our velocity, we distort the world and threaten to lose sight of what truly matters. Poet David Whyte articulates this powerfully:

The trouble with velocity as an answer to complexity is, after a while, you cannot perceive anything or anyone that isn’t traveling at the same speed as you are. . . . And things that move according to a slower wave form actually seem to become enemies to you, enemies to your way of life. And you get quite disturbed by people who are easy with themselves, and easy with life, and aren’t charging around like you do.[4]

I find Whyte’s description both relatable and tragic. When time is money, we begin to view each other as competition, or threats, even enemies, instead of as neighbors or fellow humans trying to make our way in the world. Speed and competition eliminate curiosity, and we forget that each person’s life is as meaningful and mysterious as our own. We forget that before anything else, our responsibility as humans is to love God and neighbor. When we move with increasing velocity through our days our vision narrows until it eliminates everything that is moving slower than us. And it is hard to love what we do not see. The Sabbath helps us slow down long enough to regain our vision, enabling us to inhabit time in ways that make room for love.

Time Is Love

In his award-winning book In Praise of Slowness, journalist Carl Honoré compares the terms “Fast” and “Slow,” which for him are a “shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life.”[5] His descriptions are almost perfect analogs to how I understand the differences between “time is money” and “time is love.”

Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity. [Slow] is about making real and meaningful connections—with people, culture, work, food, everything.[6]

Within a time-is-money mindset, time feels hard, combative, oppositional. Time is against us, and we must strain with all our energy and strength to survive. Sometimes our metaphors even suggest a level of malice, when time is a thief, a monster, or an enemy we must defeat.

By contrast, a time-is-love approach flips the script from hard to soft, from enemy to friend, from thief to something more like a doting grandparent. It is slow instead of fast, at ease instead of hurried, abundant instead of scarce, kind instead of cruel. “Time is love” is invitational, personal; it seeks and prioritizes connection. Love is inherently abundant; it has all the time in the world.

How do we inhabit a time-is-love posture in the midst of days filled with meetings and deadlines and rehearsals and diapers and obligations and unexpected interruptions, when there’s more to do than time to do it, when it feels like the only way to get everything done—or even some things done—is to go faster and carry more? Or perhaps you’re in the opposite situation—you’re retired, just lost your job, or had an accident and are in recovery, and now you have more time than you know what to do with. How can you meet your days with a sense of presence and purpose? What does a time-is-love posture look like?

These are the questions we need to ask. Sabbath makes room for us to consider them. It also gives us perspective from which to look at them anew. And if we ask these questions honestly, they can become mirrors, helping us to see our patterns and habits more clearly.

These questions are just the starting point, however. They point us to the realquestion—a question that is a compass, reorienting us back to the Sabbath way. In her poem, aptly titled “The Question,” poet, teacher, and kindness-spreader Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer reveals what the real question is.

The Question

for Jude Jordan Kalush, who asked the question

All day, I replay these words:

Is this the path of love?

I think of them as I rise,

as I wake my children,

as I wash dishes,

as I drive too close

behind the slow blue Subaru,

Is this the path of love?

Think of these words as I stand in line

at the grocery store,

think of them as I sit on the couch

with my daughter.

Amazing how quickly six words

become compass, the new lens

through which to see myself in the world.

I notice what the question is not.

Not, “Is this right?”

Not, “Is this wrong?”

It just longs to know

how the action of existence

links us to the path of love.

And is it this? Is it this?

All day, I let myself be led by the question.

All day I let myself not be too certain

of the answer. Is it this?

Is this the path of love? I ask

as I wait for the next word to come.[7]

This is the best way I know to live into a time-is-love posture. Ask yourself at any given moment, Is this the path of love? Ask it every day, multiple times a day. When you’re scanning Instagram during a colleague’s presentation at work, ask yourself, Is this the path of love? When your child is once again daydreaming instead of getting ready to leave and you once again respond in ways that escalate the tension, ask yourself, Is this the path of love? When you feel the conflict between getting more work done and being present to your family, your friends, or yourself, ask yourself, Is this the path of love? When you say yes when you want to say no, or no when you want to say yes, ask yourself, Is this the path of love? When you are exhausted but feel guilty when you’re not productive, ask yourself, Is this the path of love?

As the poem makes clear, the ultimate question is not Is this right or wrong? That question won’t get us very far in exploring the path of love. The right/wrong framework is native to a time-is-money mindset. So much of life cannot be reduced to the binary of right/wrong or good/bad. Seeking the path of love is a compass orienting us toward connection and compassion through the uncharted terrain of our lives.

Walking the Path of Love

The Sabbath invites us to get clear about what our values are in relation to time, so that when we feel the tug between fast and slow, distraction and presence, work and play, productivity and the people we love, the choice we make aligns with our values and the ways we desire to show up to our lives. The Sabbath reminds us that, if we truly want to know the fullness of life, we must stop marginalizing experiences of delight, joy, and connection; and we must stop diminishing capacities such as presence, patience, and playfulness. Actively cultivating these experiences and capacities in our Sabbath practice will put us in the position to receive more of the goodness life has to offer each day—and will empower us to spread that goodness everywhere we go.

Walking the path of love is being present to the moment in a way that moves us toward gratitude. It’s being patient with life’s unfolding in a way that allows us to bear witness to our own and each other’s transformation. It is beholding the tender wings as they unfold—not with the impatience of Zorba, but with the awe and wonder of a participant in the mystery of being and becoming. It is leaning into playfulness, which opens us to join with life wherever it is happening, connecting us to our own delight and that of others.

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[1] Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek: The Saint’s Life of Alexis Zorba, read by George Guidall (London: Faber and Faber, 1961; Landover, MD: Recorded Books, 1996), 7:38:00.

[2] Benjamin Franklin, “Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written By an Old One,” The American Instructor (Philadelphia, 1748). Find it at https://founders.archives.gov/?q=advice%20to%20a%20young%20tradesman&s=1111311111&sa=&r=4&sr=.

[3] Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (New York: Random House, 2010), 97.

[4] David Whyte, “Vulnerability as a faculty for understanding,” What to Remember When Waking: The Disciplines of an Everyday Life (Louisville, CO: Sounds True, 2010), audiobook, 1:09-1:50.

[5] Carl Honoré, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 14.

[6] Honoré, 14–15.

[7] Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “The Question,” All the Honey (Reno, NV: Samara Press, 2023), 31.